Rising Demand for CDMA Phones in Nigeria

A survey carried out in Nigeria's capital, Abuja has indicated a growing demand in the GSM dominated market for CDMA based mobile phones. The survey, carried out by local newspaper The Tide cited the regular problems with network congestion on the GSM networks in the city for the increased interest in CDMA operators. Currently there are four CDMA operators in the city, Multi-links, Visafone, Starcomms and Reltel.

The respondents hinged their optimism on clarity of communication and affordability of CDMA phones, when compared with GSM phones.

"For instance, with as little as N1,500, you can get a phone and a line on the CDMA network, while for a GSM line, a subscriber may need to pay at least twice that amount," claimed respondents to the survey.

Mr Wakili Shehu, a telecommunications consultant said that "the technology also provides the capacity for quicker transmission of data and Internet, unlike the GSM which has limited capacity," but he warned that the use of the CDMA technology in the country was also fraught with challenges, such as limited coverage of cities and towns, unlike the GSM.

According to figures from the Mobile World database, Nigeria ended Q1 '08 with some 567,000 active CDMA subscribers - compared to some 43 million GSM users.

SMS power in emerging economies

Mobile communication is changing the lifestyle of people and business communications worldwide with billions of SMS sent worldwide annually and over 50 million carrier grade SMS sent in Nigeria daily, SMS is positioned to be the most used communications medium of all time.

Despite the widespread illiteracy in Nigeria and many other countries in Africa , SMS is still widely used even in tribal languages which do not need special alphabets. Early adopters like the Philippines, the SMS Capital of the world, is an example of a country where emerging economics should learn from in areas of SMS services deployment. On New years day 2008, 500 million SMS messages were sent in the Philippines alone.

SMS does not require any special application download like other mobile medium like mms, wap and Gprs and this is one unique advantage it has and hence is spread and popularity.