The growth being recorded in the Telecoms industry within the short period mobile communication started in is tremendous. It is the largest and the fastest growing economy in Africa and can compete favorably globally in terms of growth rate. With unified licensing in place, service providers have the capability to diversify there services.

Need for a corresponding growth in Mobile Technology
As the rapid growth in the sector has been established, there has to be a corresponding growth in the technology which will drive it. Whether the technology in place now is sufficient is the issue one has to look into, but there is every need for us to advance and improve on what we have on the ground now, the quality of service being offered to consumers has to be high and the pricing right.
With the 2nd generation (2G) technology already in use, it enables data to be transferred only at the rate of 14.4kbps, with voice and SMS transmitted at the same speed. we also have seen the use of GPRS(general packet radio service)making it possible for mobile devices to be connected permanently to networks at the speed of a dial –up internet access. Which makes it possible to access the internet with our mobile phones and also deliver multimedia messaging (MMS).This service is fast gaining grounds here. It has also changed the way GSM phones are used today.

The future is Multimedia
The technology evolving today is such that will allow full multimedia experiences, allowing users to download videos, make video calls, download contents from the web, picture messaging, make voice calls, send SMS,and other services already in use. All these have to be transmitted at a greater speed than what we have now. The technology is the much hyped 3rd generation mobile technology (3G).This allows data transmission at a greater speed of say 2mbps.

Are we there yet?
With what I observe globally, 3G technology is a developmental process which needs not be rushed, this service became widely in use in Europe in 2004 and I still don’t think it has been fully deployed there. I find it hard to come to terms with what some service providers here say, that they already have their networks running on a 3G. I see it as not being true because the customers should experience at least improved quality of service and increased speed of basic applications such as web browsing, content download, email etc in what they offer, this to me is the initial stage of 3G.You can agreed with me that such services are not yet in place, so why the hype about it. Service providers should consider these factors; quality of service provided, range of the service, pricing, and quality of coverage in a 3G network. The right infrastructure has to be in place too.
3G when fully in place will surely change the way we use our GSM phones and improve our mobile lifestyle in Nigeria. Having said all that, the future is really bright and promising for us. With huge investments being made in the sector, 2007 might be the beginning of this evolution for us. The future of mobile communication is 3G!

CULLED FROM www.gsmusersforum.com

the federal govt will carry out the auction for 3G licenses in he first week of April. The bid price is $180 million.

Celtel and Glo have carried out successful trials of their 3G networ. I myself have received celtel 3G UMTS in port harcourt, even though i was unable to connect to it.

2007, 3G will commence!

@texazzpete:

i don't understand. Celtel UMTS? Is that some kind of Configuration for 3G enabled phones?

UMTS is an acronym for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System,it is a 3G mobile technology which makes use of the Wide Code Division Multiple Access(W-CDMA),a system that speeds up data transfer. It was designed to succeed the aging 2G GSM technology deployed worldwide.UMTS is already available in Europe and some African countries like Mauritius and South Africa courtesy of Vodacom and MTN.With UMTS,data transfer rates could be as fast as 3Mbits/sec compared to GSM which is capable of about 14kbits/sec.Plans are underway to increase uplink and downlink speed of UMTS using the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology sometimes known as 3.5G and with this dial up speeds will compete with broadband.Some of the features of UMTS include video recording as well as live TV recording and video conferencing among others.However you need a 3G enabled phone to assess these features.there are so many of them around.3G rocks and will soon storm Naija!

3G,you guys aint looking at the negative effect.can we control this effect?

@bimbor:

please give me examples of 3G enabled phones cos mine's prolly on that 2G sh*t.

Ok,talking about 3G phones most of them are network branded so watch out when buying,i'll advice you buy an unbranded product or the one that's already unlocked except u have a ready software to unlock it.Some of the available 3G phones are:
LG:KG810 chocolate phone,U830,U880,L343i,8360,8138
NEC: N411i(i mode), N343i(i mode),e338, e228,e313,e616,e606,e808y,e525
Nokia:E- series;E90,E65,N- series;N73,N77,N80, N90,N91,N95(1Q 2007),7390,6234,7600
Samsung:SGH-Z560,Z400,Z320i,Z540V,Z500
Sony ericcson:W710i,P990i,W850i,v650i,k800i,v800,w950i,w550i,m600,v630
Motorola motorazr. This list is not exhaustive.now the choice is yours,just walk into slots and ask them out.

Thanks doe. . . .'ppreciate it. Ma bro's got a N73. Will probably tweak the configuration and see if my sim browses on it. . .

i want the service providers to work on the price of the service,thats another area we need to look at.can we afford the service?

I learnt that Nigeria want to auction its 3G. If that's true it will be expensive to use, that is the thing happening in europe and asian countries.

India also planned to auction its servcie but they advised not to auction it. Hopefully Nigeria would change their minds or else few people will have opportunity to use it at its early stage.

Though the main reason why most countries are auctioning their 3G is because the amount spent in raising it high. And the only possible means to recover fast is by auctioning.

Read my articles about how 3G failed to impart positively in Europe due to the high cost of licence.http://www.businessdayonline.com/?c=51&a=11545

Nobody forced the operators to bid as high as they did as one auction architect said.

Business Day Online

If the Telecommunication companies can hold a meeting abd agree on the same amount. If they place the same bidding at the end NCC won't have any power over them.

Because according to what I read in Business Day Online, the Telecommunication Companies in Europe and other Nations, they were not forced to bid high. They choosed to, if Nigerian telecoms can do otherwise I believe NCC drop dead.

In my opinion, I think the 3G license is overpriced. This is business and I guess the strategists at the GSM networks will be looking at the return on investment they will make via 3G as a seperate business.
GPRS has not even been widely accepted yet in Nigeria because majority of us are really just satisfied with calling only. Nigerians just want to talk so why bother purchasing a license that doesn't add profit to your company?

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that the CDMA industry continues to lead in 3G, achieved numerous milestones in 2006, including substantial subscriber growth, and witnessed an increased demand for wireless broadband services worldwide.


check www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=94#94

Copied from This Day


The Federal Government, at the weekend, awarded Third Generation (3G) telecommunication licenses to the nation's three major GSM companies and a relatively unknown operator, Alheri Engineering Co. Ltd, to enable them expand their scope of operation in the industry.

Alheri and the other beneficiary companies; MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, Celtel Nigeria Limited and Globacom Nigeria Limited, emerged out of the initial 17 firms that expressed interest in the bid.


The award, THISDAY gathered, follows the expiration of the application March 16 deadline that was fixed by the industry watchdog, the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).

With the award of the licenses, the four successful applicants are expected to each pay the $150 million fee, being the Reserve Price less, the Intention-to-Bid deposit of $15 million, within 14 business days of award of the Provisional Licence, industry sources said.

THISDAY checks reveal that the four applicants' submissions were evaluated with respect to the compliance details outlined in the Information Memora-ndum with which each applicant was found to have been fully complied with.

Consequently, since the number of applicants matched the number of lots available, no further allocation process was used to award the license.

The NCC, in a statement yesterday, said it was pleased to announce that each of the applicants has been successful in its bid for a 10MHz lot in the 2GHz band.

The commission further expressed that "it expects to receive the licence fees, being the reserve price less the Intention-to-Bid deposit of $15 million, within 14 business days of award of the Provisional Licence. Upon receipt of cleared funds, the commission will award the Spectrum Licence", it added.

The NCC has at the outset of the licence allocation process stated its objectives to efficiently allocate spectrum to those who value it most in an open and transparent manner, following international best practice, saying it has fully met those objectives.

It, therefore, congratulated the winners and urged them to continue to contribute to the development of the Nigerian telecommunications sector and the economy.

The NCC, as one of the first African countries to issue 3G spectrum, expressed the belief that the success of the licensing process would help maintain Nigeria's place in the vanguard of investing in and deploying new communication technology in the continent.

It will be recalled that the NCC last year unveiled its intention to license spectrum in the 2 GHz bands (3G) in order to further the development of the communications industry

I guess this is a good development for the telecomms industry in Nigeria.Am so particular about the quality of service that will be offered and the pricing too.It really has to be regulated.

more news about 3G licence in www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=124#124

just need to update my phone.can someone recomend a 3G compactible phone for me?

check out the newest of the Nokia E series phones,the Nokia E65 3G phone.

www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=139#139

check prices of 3G phones at www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42

Gd development

I see the interest in 3G is positive in Nigeria and that is good, but the real problem will be pricing and the number of people who will subscribe to the service. You should all know that here in europe where the technology has been in use since 2003/2004 the number of people using it is not that great nor is it growing further in popularity. The service has reduced to personal choice and not a total conversion or in other words not a total switch over from 2G to 3G. To be factual people are still making maximum use of 2G since the tariffs are affordable compared to 3G.
This trend will be the case in Nigeria when it eventually arrives, but in my opinion will be used by the rich or those who are ready to blow away other mobile phone users by showing off.
Here in europe we tend to stick to what is necessary untill it becomes a necessity in terms of your status or it becomes standard for every one to use as long as the tariff is affordable nationally and is regulated by a watchdog establishment.
Therefore do not get excited over 3G, because it is not a total success here in europe in terms of business, but it is only a technological success in terms of implementation and usage.

d6mild

yeah, if these chumps try and charge exhorbitantly for 3G, it'll flop faster than you can say Jack Robinson, !

Yeah and i hope dey dnt cos if dey do people wldnt be so so interested.

NOKIA N95 3G PHONE REVIEW

The Nokia N95 was first announced in September 2006 at the Nokia Open Studio event in New York. .The N95 will be remembered as the 3G handset that took us to somewhere new.

Of course, the Nokia Nseries is aimed at users looking to pack as many features as possible into one device.The full title for the N95 is the N95 Nseries Multimedia Computer.

Even before it had started shipping it had won an award ! This was from Popular Science magazine's "Best of What's New" Award in the publication's annual search for the top 100 technology innovations of the year.

The Nokia N95 offers a unique dual-slider device, including integrated GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, digital music player, full PIM functionality and support for 3G and HSDPA networks. Oh, and a full suite of N-series applications and an excellent Web browser (with Wi-Fi support).

Can the N95 weighing only 120 grams and with a maximum thickness of 21 mm really deliver all that Nokia claims. Well lets dig deeper.

It runs the latest version of the S60 software platform ( S60 3rd Edition P1 ). This means a new version of the S60 browser, a better RSS application, Flash Lite and more. It's all powered by a thumping ARM11 OMAP 2420 processor running at 330 MHz.

The unique two-way sliding design works as follows. Slide up to reveal the keypad and slide down to reveal the touch sensitive media player controls. With the player controls viewable, the screen powers into landscape mode. The player controls include forward, back, stop and pause play for the Music Player.


This is a reasonably light handset for a multimedia computer and the Nokia design team must be congratulated. With the phone closed the menu and normal key functions are accessible. The primary camera is at rearside along with a LED light / cover. For video calls, the secondary camera is located top front.

The Nokia N95 offers a powerful 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens, auto focus and flash. Pictures are shown on the impressive 2.6 inch display. You can upload your photos directly from your camera phone to the Flickr online photo community. At 30 frames per second, you can easily capture moving objects.

The ring slider opens and closes the shutter. The camera switches on when the shutter is in the “ON” position. The screen is used as the viewfinder with the phone held horizontally. If you can use a digital camera phone, the N95 is similar to operate.

The result is a camera phone that produces results close to digital camera quality but with some limitations. The main observation would be limited sharpness / blurry results. However, unless you closely examine the results you may never notice anything adverse.



The full technical specification of the camera is is as follows :

Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/5.6 mm lens with auto focus

5 mega pixel (2595 x 1944 pixels) CMOS sensor

5.6 mm focal length corresponds to a 35 mm frame

Mechanical shutter with 1/1000 to 1/3 seconds

20x digital zoom

Focusing range: 10 cm (macro) to infinite

Macro range: 10 cm to 50 cm

Integrated LED flash, range up to 1.5 m

Flash modes: on, off, automatic

Capture modes: standard, series, self timer, video

Subjects: landscape, portrait, night, sport, macro, night portrait

White balance: automatic, sunny, cloudy, lamps, fluorescing

Color tones: normal, sepia, black & white, color saturation, negative

Speed: automatic, high, medium, low

Closeable flap to protect the optics


Looking at the technical specification above you can see there are plenty of features and options such as landscape, portrait, night, sport, macro, night portrait to experiment with.

We are told you can record video but didn't get that far as we wanted to concentrate on the match winning camera and on-board GPS.

The GPS is a crowd-pulling addition to the N95. According to Nokia, GPS can be accessed in 100 countries. Mars and the Moon are not included to-date. The Maps software application lets you view - would you believe downloaded maps !

Once you got the maps on your device you are ready to go. The maps themselves are free but you will need to purchase the navigational data from Nokia. This means that if you want real-time directions ( visual and voice ) you have to pay. We recommend you just purchase a week's worth to get started and see if the experience / package meets your needs. A very clever earner from Nokia.

The way it works is as follows :

- you search for your desired location by location, address or post code

- it jumps to your present location and displays this ready to track you

- follow the on-screen and audible instructions e.g. turn right etc.


Does it work ? Yes it does and it can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode. At the moment there is no speed camera or road traffic alerts but I am sure this will come. The search facility seemed a bit hit and miss but a route planned trip of 35 miles was okay. One thing to remember is that you need to have the bottom slider open to get the best GPS signal because this is where the antenna is situated.

The only issue could be that the downloading of maps from the nokia servers becomes slow. It will be tested over the next few months as there is a stampede of new N95 owners ready to join in. Of course, as its Free the stampede may turn into an avalanche.

One possible way to avoid this is to use your PC to download large maps onto your microSD memory card. In 2006 Nokia bought out Smart2go and the Smart2go application became "Nokia Maps". So checkout www.smart2go.com and save yourself a lot of wasted time. You could download the whole of London in one swoop.

The whole music player thing is slick and functional. Nokia’s music software lets you transfer tracks easily. There is also drag and drop possibilities. The sides of the phone house the stereo speakers and the sound was well balanced with a good feel. With a cutting edge handset like this you still need to be able to use your bins. So I'm glad to see the 3.5mm headphone socket.

Nokia has introduced a Mozilla type proprietary browser for the N95. I'm not quite sure what this means yet I know you can browse in portrait or landscape modes. There is a “fast browsing” option which speeds things up by displaying thumbs of the pages. Might be useful.

All the N95 applications and particularly the GPS must have an adverse effect on battery life. I feel that for phones with GPS the phone makers now need to include an official “GPS battery time” just like for talktime, videotime and standby time. During our tests we found it needed an evening charge each night. Our N95 had a Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH.

The bottom line for the N95 is that it is getting close, but at the moment cannot fully replace a dedicated digital camera or a sat-nav system. There are limitations. But HEY, a 3G HSDPA phone with a 5 mega pixel (2595 x 1944 pixels) camera and on-board GPS means its going to be very well accepted by all you mobile warriors out there.

Watch the video review of Nokia N95 at www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=138

get more reviews of latest phones at www.gsmusersforum.com

Am so so impressed with the new development

Read the review yesterday on 3G Uk. The phone is very good and I like it.

The only things that scares me away from it is

1: Its keys. I was actually expecting a qwerty keypad.

2: The price is just too much. I can buy A 007 version of Laptop from Alienware and still get more.

How much is it.If its expensive it will scare people away.

I once saw it to be around $1255.99

hi all,does anyone know d latest price of the nokia n70,d last time i checked it was 41k so im still waiting 4 d price 2 drop b4 i buy.

In Naira or in Dollars?

The price of N70 is about #38,000
N72 IS #36,000
N73 IS #53,000

Get the prices of other Phones at www.gsmusersforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42

Coolskeelz, i came across a site where one could get the n70 for as low as $140 and d n95 for $300,they are in Greece and d phones would be delivered via Fedex in 3 days.what do u say about dis,i mean do u think its a safe deal?