Although the IT & Telecom revolution arrived late in Pakistan, it has changed many things at a swift rateboth in urban and rural areas. The introduction of WLL also made it possible to make many of the rural areas 'connected' as compared to 'disconnected' in past. It's implications in the big cities of the country is also bringing noticeable results but the main aim was to pass on the telecom revolution to the rural population.

What happened was that, immediately after the introduction of WLL services in some parts of country, it apparently became a 'replacement' of cellular services; and in some cases it sure was the replacement.

The cellular industry of Pakistan started with AMPS technology when Paktel and Instaphone introduced cellular services. Then along with it came the GSM technology with Mobilink becoming the first GSM service provider of the country. It was more over like a big bang for metropolitan cities of Pakistan but started with a 'status symbol' kind of thing. Every body thought it was the best technology or the best that could happen.

The expensive call rates and mobile sets resulted in the stress on the GSM word during conversations very evident in those days. Then Nokia 3310 became the dream of everyone. But as we know revolutions don't leave anything unchanged and now we can see there are five GSM operators in Pakistan.

With the arrival of GSM, the attitude of people changed as only the very rich had the mobiles. The expensive call rates and mobile sets resulted in the stress on the GSM word during conversations very evident in those days. Then Nokia 3310 became the dream of everyone. But as we know revolutions don't leave anything unchanged and now we can see there are five GSM operators in Pakistan - Mobilink, Ufone, Paktel, Warid and Telenor. In this current scene of tough competition, Mobilink is already enjoying the lion's share with some subscribers from the good old days. The race to get more and more subscribers and offering the most attractive features has now even enabled the not-so-rich Pakistani society to get mobile connections. According to unconfirmed sources, Pakistan has over 10.5 Million cell phone users. The pace of our cellular industry's growth is evident from the fact that cellular explosion occurred on 3 June 2003 when the figure reached 2,200,000 from a mere 50,000 in January 1995 and today these figures seem nothing when we compare them with the latest statistics.

And then came the hammer's blow to the cellular operators when WLL popped up and not just as an alternative to 'land lined' telephony but to actually dare the cellular service providers.

On December 20, 2004 a press release announced that TeleCard Limited has become Pakistan's first Wireless Local Loop (WLL) operator in the post-deregulation regime. TeleCard introduced with the help of PTA an advanced CDMA Technology based wireless telephony service. Initially, it was only for commercial public call services but

within few months it also offered wire-free prepaid phone connections for domestic use. Being a private company, TeleCard in other words launched something that even the government owned PTCL was not offering at that time as they launched their WLL service quite late. Many analysts took it as the end of cellular and land lined telephony as if everybody would start using WLL.

January 19, 2005 brought another name in the forefront of Pakistan's telecom scene when GO CDMA launched in Karachi. The aggressive marketing directly hitting the monopoly operator and traditional means of communication was seen by the new WLL player and hence introduced an attractive way of connectivity with both Internet and telephony at fractions of Rupee per minute. It was the day when many things dawned upon the Pakistani telecom market and forced the cellular operators to strike back as it was an apparent threat to their corporate interests.

The cellular operators had been criticizing the way WLL operators were taking the 'limited mobility' concept for quite some time. Cellular operators had to go to the regulator to safeguard their interests as they paid millions of dollars as license fees and were expecting their piece of cake out of Pakistan's wireless pie. PTA listened to both WLL and cellular players and cleared the concept of 'limited mobility' by issuing a determination on this. According to PTA this determination provides, exhibits the real spirit of the Telecommunication Deregulation Policy 2003, which says that LL licensees who opt for wireless solutions may provide limited mobility within a cell, but not beyond local call charging radius. No inter-cell handovers and roaming to other networks will be allowed.

Let me give some technical overview of WLL as people sometimes misunderstand and take both WLL and CDMA as the same thing, whereas, CDMA is one of the way to implement WLL.

WLL
Wireless local loop (WLL), also called radio in the loop (RITL) or fixed-radio access (FRA), is the use of wireless connection as the last mile for delivering plain old telephone service (POTS) to customers. A Wireless Local Loop is a system that connects subscribers to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using radio signals as a substitute for copper for all or part of the connection between the subscriber and the switch. This includes cordless access systems, proprietary fixed radio access, and fixed cellular systems.

CDMA
CDMA, one of the three wireless telephone transmission technologies, takes an entirely different approach from GSM and the similar TDMA. CDMA, after digitizing data, spreads it out over the entire bandwidth it has available. Multiple calls are overlaid over each other on the channel, with each assigned a unique sequence code. CDMA claims superiority over TDMA in terms of quality, capacity and security.

Where's the difference?
In general, CDMA Mobile refers to full mobility with handoffs across cells and CDMA WLL refers to Fixed Wireless with restricted or limited handoffs across cells. Although, there can be differences in the choice of the switching systems employed by the operators, there is no difference on the radio side. The WLL CDMA systems are differentiated by the type of subscribers (mobile or fixed) and the limited mobility of CDMA WLL system.

Limited Mobility?
Limited Mobility is an application/procedure by which the Service Provider restricts mobility of wireless subscribers to within the Local Area, i.e. Short Distance Charging Area (SDCA), in which the subscriber is registered. In other words, limited mobility means “providing Wireless Local Loop Service within a single charging area.” A single charging area could be a small town or a big cosmopolitan city. The number of cells to provide coverage within the charging area would depend on the size of the charging area.

Future
As Diallog just launched and came into the WLL scene, WorldCall, GO CDMA and PTCL's Vfone already in the market; many more are expected to come soon. Burraq Telecom is also going to launch their WLL soon as their widely appreciated 'Combo' card just got launched with a surprise to the industry. Warid already has a WLL license and in future other cellular operators may also acquire licenses and jump into this field. In this way, they will have an upper hand on other WLL companies as they would have less cost involved in the expansion of their CDMA network by using already installed towers. One thing is sure - the future is of wireless services. As the competition is tough, let's see who wins the race. Afterall every company that paid huge license fee needs business and foresaw 'something' in this industry while entering into it. Let's hope for the best and see what happens next.