Telcoms, ISPs in keen competition over internet services
There are strong indications that telecommunication firms like, MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Airtel among others and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like, Spectranet, Smile and Swift etc may soon be on collision course Over The Top Services (OTTS) which the latter now provide at no cost to customers.
Also, the telecommunication firms in a bid to outwit one another and possibly beat the ISPs to their game, have began mouth watering offers to their customers who use their internet services on data. For instance, Glo recently introduced eight times bonus data bundle for its numerous subscribers, meaning that when a subscriber buys data worth any amount, he would get eight times the said amount.
This keen competition between internet providers and their telecom counterparts has become so because the ISPs have ventured into voice calls which was the exclusive domain of the mobile telecommunication operators.
This entry into voice call services came about because the ISPs like Spetranet, Smile, Swift among others, now use a new technology called Voice Over LTE (VOLTE) which is an add-on App that sits on 4G LTE which now provides both voice and data internet services.
Despite the fears expressed by stakeholders over the competition, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Spectranet Limited, Mr. David Venn, however, denied that there was fierce competiotion in the telecom sector, adding that ISPs were doing very well in providing broadband internet services to their numerous customers.
Venn noted that the big telecommunications companies were having problems providing qualitative internet services because they were using an outdated technology that had been in existence since the last thirty years which is the 3G.
He said:“3G is been out for 15 years now, it took 15 years to develop 3G, 3G is actually a 30 years old technology, when 3G was launched 15 years ago, if you went and bought a computer, it will be Pentium 2, that was when 3G was launched.
“With LTE, that is the 4G, it is the opposite, there is no voice on LTE, on 4G it is data only, but they have recently brought out a new technology which was planned and it actually just came out, which is called Voice Over LTE (VOLTE) and that is like an App that sits on a 4G network and you can have voice and the quality is nice, good voice, it is clear much clearer than GSM but it is not the basic 4G, 4G is for data only and Voice Over LTE is an add on.
“So 4G is designed for data and it is very efficient for data, and the VOLTE is an App that sits on it which has made it possible to now use both data and voice on the 4GLTE/VOLTE. Meanwhile, in terms of data generation, you can get more data down there on the 4G than what the telecommunication companies could offer from 3G. The data in 4G is much more efficient, it uses the spectrum much more efficiently”.
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