Duxbury Networking to showcase world-leading wireless solutions at Africa.com

AfricaCom, Africa’s largest annual communications congress and exhibition (12-14 November), has been selected by specialist distributor Duxbury Networking to showcase its full range of wireless communications offerings.

“Duxbury Networking has partnered with several key vendors from around the world, including Deliberent, Ligowave, Proxim, Cambium, Bridgewave and others, enabling us to design and deploy wireless solutions eminently suitable for the African continent,” says Andy Robb, chief technology officer at Duxbury Networking.

“Wireless technologies offer a practical alternative to traditional wired systems in Africa, not only to boost efficiencies in the corporate arena, but also to help tackle health, social, environmental and development challenges via the optimisation of GSM networks,” he says.

Robb sees wireless technologies having many roles to play in the emerging markets of Africa: “They can be deployed as the main infrastructure of a corporate network which is often simpler than a wired solution due to the remote geographical locations of branches and the resulting access issues linked to patchy land-line communications infrastructures.

“Today, affordable GSM wireless services are changing the face of communications in Africa, giving consumers an opportunity to communicate on low cost mobile phones. This is evidenced by the cellular operator-to-subscriber ratios which are among the highest in the world,” he notes.

On display on the Duxbury stand at Africa.com will be wireless products with reaches of between 50 metres and 300 kilometres. They are targeted at a range of market segments, from wireless internet service providers (WISPs) to corporate end-users.

A focus of the Duxbury stand will be on high-bandwidth, backhaul solutions designed to optimise current and new infrastructures to handle services such as mobile Internet and mobile TV characterised by high bandwidth demands.

Also emphasised will be GSM cellular extenders, the market for which is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years. “It will be driven by significant economic development and demands by consumers for better mobile network coverage in remote rural areas where the availability of land-line options is limited at best,” adds Robb.

Leading brands showcased by Duxbury at Africa.com include;

• Deliberent: Wireless broadband network solutions for WISP and SME (small-to-medium enterprise) markets.
• Ligowave: Broadband wireless access solutions operating in both the licensed and unlicensed frequency spectrums.
• Proxim: Scalable wireless networking products for evolving networks.
• Cambium: Point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless solutions.
• Bridgewave: Wireless gigabit applications for high speed Internet connections.
• Coiler: Mobile signal enhancement solutions for indoor and outdoor coverage for all mobile networks.
• 2N: IP (Internet Protocol) communications offerings ranging from mobile voice solutions to wireless leased-line replacement options.
• Snom: Custom-built voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony solutions for organisations of between 16 and 20 000 users.
• Nextivity: Baseband processors designed to enable products that offer dynamic wireless broadband services, without the requirement for a fixed broadband connection.