CHAPTER ONE

1.0. INTRODUCTION

        Advances in the area of wireless technologies have the potential of transforming communication initiatives especially, in the developing countries of Africa that are characterized by a dilapidated telecommunications infrastructure. Through these technologies, it is now possible to bring wireless access to remote and disadvantaged communities. It is also significant that costs for wireless technologies continue to drop, making wireless connectivity increasingly affordable. Today, many in Africa are plugged – in and switched-on (Zachary, 2004).

        The most documented from wireless use in Africa is the mobile phone, growth in mobile telephone in Africa has been rapid in the last eight years, since telecommunications sector reforms in most countries opened markets to competition as a result of the ‘Basic Telecommunication Service Agreement’ the demand has overtaken that of fixed line services. For most of the new subscribers, their mobile phone is their first and only telephone. Most countries Africa have as least two mobile networks, one of which is government. Owned by the end of 2001, Africa had 104 mobile networks operational, serving over 14 million customers in addition to 10 million in South Africa (Warmook and Sankar 2004). And they were almost 52 million by the end of 2003 (ITU, 2004), By far, the majority of the systems in use are now based on the digital GSM standard.

        One notable observation is the considerable variation between different African logies, ranging from the fairly advanced status of south Africa to the relatively under developed status of Somalia.

        This paper has not dwelt much on south Africa, even though there is a lot of documented literature from this country, because it is not representative of the rest of the continent, especially sub-saharan Africa where poverty is the norm. The developments in South Africa given their nature and scope would constitute a more comprehensive/study.

        Some examples from African show the surge in the mobile sector growth in Cameroon has, in a way compensated for the disappointing performance of Cameroon Telecommunication Company (CAMTEL). The mobile phone accounts for more than 4 percent of teledensity and the fixed lines for less than 0.7 percent in the country which has a population of 16 million (Nzepa 2004).

In Ethiopia, the current demand for mobile lines is five times that of the fixed line waiting list. The number of subscribers improved in 2002 following the expansion of the network and introduction of the prepaid service (Adam, 2004). In Kenya, the combined connections for the two cellular operators had increased from 1500 to 2.1 million by the end of 2003. this difference represent a growth rate of 27 percent year (Mureithi 2004) and is much higher than the 3.5 percent rate of the fixed line operation. There are currently 6.8 million subscribers as of June 2005. The mobile network is now over ten times the size of the fixed network in subscription numbers.

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