Johannesburg, 17 Apr 2012
Currently, Tony Wood is the Country Senior Officer and CEO for Alcatel Lucent East Africa, covering 10 countries within the larger Eastern Africa region, including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.
Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and optics technologies, and a pioneer in applications and services. Wood is responsible for the sales and delivery of services to service providers, enterprises, strategic industries and governments throughout Eastern Africa, and has been based in Nairobi for the past 12 months.
The company has a strong presence in Africa in a numerous countries; the company's regional organisation is active in almost all counties of the whole region: Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Azerbaijan, where teams provide central support to leverage best practices and help the region's countries to ensure growth and capture new business opportunities; and driven by local presence embodied by dedicated teams in each country with local knowledge and global expertise.
Broadband for Africa - realise the potential of connected world, tackle rural inclusion
Africa is a growing market and a focus market for Alcatel-Lucent; it remains among the company's most promising markets. Indeed, broadband is one of the top priorities in Africa, good progress has been made to connect cities to national backbones, but connectivity of small towns still poor.
It is a vast continent with various needs for connectivity and is mainly characterised by basic infrastructure needs in some areas, and more developed areas where existing infrastructures must now deliver high-quality broadband connectivity to support services like high-speed Internet access.
The globalisation of the economy and the growth of the Internet have enhanced worldwide communications. End-users wherever based in a remote village or in a big city should rely on stable telecommunications connections to enquire about the wider world and make their contribution to it. The convergence of services (broadband Internet + video on-demand + voice) has become a significant reality. Telecom operators, service providers, enterprises rely on their networks to run their voice, data and Internet communication.
Our region is definitely in need of affordable connectivity, as it is essential for social and economic development. Increasing the availability of high-bandwidth for mobile broadband is crucial for Africa's future development, and the world's appetite for mobile broadband services is more voracious than ever - also high growth in smartphone sales is dramatically changing usage patterns.
On the other hand, the Internet continues to become unwired; it remains a catalyst for change, for development and innovation, while operators and service providers are embracing the economic opportunity while coping with the capacity challenge.
Having said that, universal access to all will break network barriers to enrich and improve end-users' mobile broadband experiences. The only economical way to satisfy the mass market hunger for mobile broadband is to capture all circuit-switched, packet-switched, fixed access and aggregation networks in a single, end-to-end IP architecture - in other words, wireless and IP is what we call a High Leverage Network. But operators need more than cutting-edge technology, as this challenge requires a technology partner that can translate breakthrough innovation into operational excellence in the field, with proven capabilities in wireless and IP with the aim of providing simplified, flexible and cost-effective networks.
Alcatel-Lucent is strongly involved in the telecom infrastructure development in Africa to support telecommunications actors to rise above the data storm to overcome network, business-model and competitive challenges. Meeting the need for mobile telecommunications and the adoption of next-generation technologies, including lightRadio - the revolutionary innovation of Alcatel-Lucent (a miniature device that offers a solution to network gridlock and universal broadband coverage) and 4G LTE networks, to foster digital inclusion and the development of applications to enhance education, youth employment, social engagement, health and transportation among local communities and across large geographies.
“Breakthrough innovation and technologies, proven execution and experience - that is what mobile broadband operators count on from us, from our market leadership in wireless and IP, our research advances from Bell Labs, our company's innovation engine, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry and our global service experience in transforming networks to rise above the mobile data storm, to deliver cost-effective and high quality mobile broadband services to consumers and business users,” said Wood. He added: “Realising the potential of a connected world is an integral part of our vision and strategy.”
To tell you more about the lightRadio, while not going through too technical milestones, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled lightRadio last year - the outcome of research by Bell Labs, the group's world-leading R&D arm.
New generation of active antenna - cube small enough to hold in palm of your hand
It is a completely revolutionary approach for mobile networking. This brand new range will free the mobile sector around the world from its dependence on antenna masts and mobile base stations (cell towers), which are generally the most energy-consuming components of the network, and also the most expensive and difficult to maintain.
At a time of rapid traffic growth, the lightRadio system will radically simplify mobile networks, expand network capacity, lower operating costs, reduce energy consumption and bring connectivity to everyone around the world. With its flexible architecture, lightRadio is typically located at the base of each cell tower, is broken into its component elements and distributed through the network or 'carrier cloud'.
Additionally the various cell tower antennas are combined and shrunk into a single, powerful, Bell Labs-pioneered multi-frequency, multi-standard (2G, 3G, LTE) device that can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings, WiFi networks or anywhere else there is power and a broadband connection.
In only a year, Alcatel-Lucent has not only moved from prototype to product, but has built an entire next-generation mobile platform, and it has a rich ecosystem of partners and co-creation customers it has been working with around the world: Telef'onica, France Telecom/Orange, China Mobile, and Etisalat in the UAE.
The lightRadio architecture is fundamentally changing the structure of wireless networks to handle the video and Web surfing demands of consumers, increasing daily with the number of smartphones and tablets. Connecting becomes easy with lightRadio.
Alcatel-Lucent was named one of MIT Technology Review's 2012 Top 50 list of the "World's Most Innovative Companies" for breakthroughs such as lightRadio, which cuts power consumption and operating costs on wireless networks while delivering lightning fast Internet access. Through such innovations, Alcatel-Lucent is making communications more sustainable, more affordable and more accessible as it pursues its mission - realising the potential of a connected world.
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