Telecom Namibia assures customers over WiMAX phase-out
Alternatives sought
Telecom Namibia CEO, Stanley Shanapinda, has confirmed that there is no reason for concern regarding the suspension of the company’s WiMAX service.This comes after some users reportedly received an erroneous notification claiming that the service was being suspended. “We are still in discussions with CRAN,” Shanapinda said on the matter.
Josephine Shigwedha, CRAN’s CEO for Regulatory Legal Services, explained that a telecommunications provider cannot simply cut off a service and leave Namibians without connectivity. “You cannot just provide a service to someone and then withdraw it, because that leaves the user without a connection. That is where the matter stands at the moment. We are working with Telecom to find an alternative to WiMAX that can serve those users before the service is suspended,” she said.
Shigwedha confirmed that WiMAX will eventually be phased out, beginning in urban areas where alternative infrastructure is already available. “We will not be able to remove WiMAX in rural areas until another solution is in place. We cannot just throw people off the network,” she stressed.
WiMAX, a telecommunications technology designed to deliver wireless data over long distances, has been especially useful in Namibia due to its wider coverage compared to Wi-Fi, enabling it to serve users several kilometres from a single base station. However, with the rise of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology, now the global industry standard, WiMAX has steadily declined and is becoming obsolete. – [email protected]