Wimax Day Newsletter of Monday, April 30, 2007
wimaxday.net
Booz Allen flips flops on tech neutrality
PARIS (WiMAX Day). The international consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has issued a report on telecommunications in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that concludes “effective regulatory management is key to creating telecom markets that thrive.”
One of the key findings of the report, according to AME, states that restrictive licensing will inhibit development of the MENA telecoms sector. The report encourages the telecoms sector “to adopt service- and technology-neutral licensing and regulatory frameworks. The benefits of neutrality are numerous, as it removes regulatory preference from competitive technology choices and allows operators to increase service variety, increase revenue streams, and reduce inefficiencies.”
In the report, Chady Smayra, a Booz Allen associate in Beirut, cited the Kingdom of Jordan as one example of a country that has embraced technology neutrality and enabled the deployment of technologies such as WiMAX.
Booz Allen Hamilton is the same consulting firm that in November 2006 released a report on behalf of the UMTS Forum in London, with the jingoistic title Thriving in Harmony. That report advocated the harmonisation of radio spectrum over liberalisation, which seeks technology neutrality. “Liberalisers want those bands [2.3 and 2.6 GHz] to made ‘technology agnostic,’ so they can be used by businesses such as future operators of mobile WiMAX networks,” the UMTS report noted. The UMTS report concluded that the introduction of technology neutrality for spectrum in Europe “could result in losses in buying power of up to €244 billion.”
One can only hope that the next report from Booz Allen details the methodology which led them to conclude technology neutrality can have such catastrophic economic consequences for one economy, and unbridled economic growth for the other.
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WiMAX Day will not be published on May 1, 2007, due to European holidays.
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