A bid to boost connectivity

COMPUTER LAP TOP/ WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY: A local surfs the Web in the street in the northern Salamanca town in this December 15, 2006 file photo. Salamanca, 200 miles (316 km) north of the capital Santiago, became Chile's first WiFi town in September. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hailed the project as the first of its kind in South America and as a major step toward "cutting the gap between rich and poor, between the capital and the regions, between the large and small cities". To match feature CHILE-WIRELESS/ REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/Files (CHILE)

COMPUTER LAP TOP/ WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY: A local surfs the Web in the street in the northern Salamanca town in this December 15, 2006 file photo. Salamanca, 200 miles (316 km) north of the capital Santiago, became Chile's first WiFi town in September. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hailed the project as the first of its kind in South America and as a major step toward "cutting the gap between rich and poor, between the capital and the regions, between the large and small cities". To match feature CHILE-WIRELESS/ REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/Files (CHILE)

Published Oct 15, 2015

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Cape Town - The Wireless Broadband Alliance has announced a partnership with the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance to further expand the development of unlicenced wireless technologies, the organisation said on Thursday.

The partnership will see the parties collaborating in an initiative with industry-leading organisations. This collaboration aims to drive innovation in unlicensed spectrum, said WBA.

This is critical as the past two decades has seen a steady, exponential growth in different technologies, and how radio technologies have made strides in venturing in unlicensed spectrum, and adopting platforms such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee.

The organisations noted how “access to unlicensed bands has enabled innovation and business deployment by entities ranging from the world’s largest companies to the smallest of startups”.

They said this partnership would see them “working together to promote and support the development of unlicensed wireless technologies, including TV white space”.

The partnership would see the two organisations work together to expand the available spectrum in the wireless broadband sphere and look at “co-developing guidelines with the aim of ensuring interoperability within the ecosystem and promoting the usage of unlicensed wireless technologies at both the technical and regulatory level”.

H Nwana, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance executive director said: “The Wi-Fi ecosystem is invaluable to connecting the next four billion consumers in emerging markets”.

WBA CEO Shrikant Shenwai added: “The growing appetite for data, both for consumer use and, increasingly, in voice and IoT [internet of things] deployments, means that innovative solutions need to be explored to maximise the efficiency of wireless spectrum use. The combination of Wi-Fi and other unlicensed wireless technologies require effective spectrum utilisation to provide the oxygen of future innovation”.

The two organisations showcased their collaborative work this week at WBA’s Wi-Fi Global Congress in San Jose, and will be presenting their work at DSA’s Global Summit next year, which would take place from April 26 – 26.

WBA, Shenwai said, is focused on “driving next generation Wi-Fi and its role in Public Wi-Fi services, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Converged Services, Smart Cities and 5G, and the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, the global organisation advocating laws and regulation that would lead to more efficient and effective spectrum utilisation”

AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY

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