BuddeBlog

The African Cellular and Wireless Report by EMC Publishing shows that African growth is at the phenomenal rate of more than 100% – twice the international average. Mobile phone companies setting up networks in Africa should achieve 100% year-on-year growth, GSM in Africa conference delegates heard last week.

Global interest in the African market is evident; many are eyeing Africa for the first time, although 43 GSM operators are already active within the continent.

So far Africa claims only 5.4 million users, with 70% of them in South Africa. But they are growing at 101% year-on-year, almost twice the global average. By 2002 EMC expects South Africa’s subscriber base to go from 3.8 million to 11 million – assuming the third operator is licensed by 2002.

Coles Myer has announced its participation in GlobalNetXchange, an international e-retailing alliance in which 4 of the top 7 retail chains will participate to establish a B2B network. Together the group has the ability to purchase $350 billion annually from suppliers and distributors.

Formed in 1992, Two Way TV’s brand of interactive TV entertainment is among the first wave of interactive services available on digital cable. Viewers receive a wide range of play-as-you watch enhanced TV games synchronized with broadcast TV — plus a range of other competitive activities on-demand.

Two Way TV has carriage in the UK on the CWC digital network and will roll out on Telewest digital over the next few months. In addition to TWIN in North America, Two Way TV has formed a venture to deliver its live, interactive games with partner ITVA in Australia and New Zealand. Two Way TV’s system architecture can be operated across any platform, making digital cable, satellite and terrestrial platforms viable targets for distribution to countries throughout the world. Two Way TV is backed by Cable & Wireless Communications, The Hilton Group and American venture capital fund Vencom.

In May 2000, the Nielsen/NetRatings, a global Internet audience measurement service was launched.

Topline findings indicate that MSN, Yahoo! and Passport are the most popular sites by domain in Australia. They also announced that global Internet domains figure prominently in international surfing activity. MSN was the top Web site by domain in the UK, New Zealand and Australia, and was second only to Yahoo! in Singapore and Ireland.

While the US is experiencing an equal split of male to female Internet users, men account for 55 percent of the audience profile in Australia. Men in Australia also spent on average nearly nine hours surfing the net in March, with women averaging just under seven hours online. The average time spent across both sexes was nearly eight hours for the month, and 34 minutes during each surfing session.

The March ‘at home’ Internet universe in Australia was 5,985,636 individuals, of which nearly half (2,970,626) were active users during the month. This compares to the March ‘at home’ Internet universe of 129,661,799 in the US, of which 63% (81,637,799) were active users.

Comparable Summary of Australia, New Zealand & US Statistics for March 2000

Australia US New Zealand

Internet Universe –

(all individuals aged 2+ who

have access to the Internet

at home) 5,985,636 129,661,799 1,206,498

Active Internet -

(all individuals aged 2+ who

accessed the Internet during

the reporting period) 2,970,626 81,637,799 565,480

Number of surfing sessions

per person per month 14 19 16

Number of pages viewed

per person per month 515 670 462

Number of pages viewed per

surfing session per person 38 35 29

Duration of surfing session

(in minutes) 0:34:36 0:30:42 0:29:46

The introduction of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) into public telecommunications networks, cable TV networks and enterprise networks is changing the market for fibre optic component makers.

Traditionally fibre optic links had one laser and one detector, together with associated hardware (connectors, couplers). Networks with DWDM equipment, demand multiple numbers of lasers, detectors and filters and will allow multiple channels to transmit through one fibre optic cable. DWDM has largely been limited to submarine and terrestrial long-haul distances. Now the demand has also increased for metro DWDM where customers want a smaller number of channels to send signals, but they want greater versatility, ultimately reducing costs.