2010 needs telecoms infrastructure and planning

With an estimated several million people expected to arrive in South Africa for the global football event (over two million arrived in Germany in 2006, according to the World Cup organising committee), it is likely that each of them will have a cellphone, either on roaming or will buy a pay-as-you-go plan when they land.

The networks in turn will need to plan for this sudden influx by upgrading their capacity at airports and stadiums, adds Courtenay. Most football stadiums can accommodate anything from 50 000 to 100 000 people, most of whom will want to make or receive a call.

Plan, implement and measure

"We are anticipating there is going to be quite a significant need in the market here to plan, implement and measure the quality of mobile networks from a subscriber's point of view," he says.

"The country needs to take full advantage of the influx of people and the media exposure of something like a World Cup."

Networks will need to ensure their services are ready to handle the influx, especially that their roaming capabilities are sufficiently robust enough as most visitors are expected to be foreign tourists who will be roaming.

"There are these issues of expectation of quality of service and capacity planning, but there are also concerns such as revenue generation and revenue management that are going to be such an issue for the 2010 World Cup," says Courtenay.

More advanced offerings

Over and above this, the types of services operators going to be offering are likely to be much more advanced than what subscribers are currently used to.

Much faster data services and mobile television broadcasts are likely to be as mainstream as camera phones are now. This means that operators will need to think about how they will bill and offer these services, especially when some of them, such as mobile TV broadcasts, might be provided by a third party.

Among its usual network quality testing, Atio is setting up a roaming verification service in SA. "We will test the level of service provided by local operators to roaming subscribers, with particular emphasis on countries where the bulk of those tourists expected to come from," says Courtenay.

"We are marketing to global operators whose subscribers are going to come here, and to local operators to make sure that their international links and interconnect services operate correctly."

Atio will also be testing to ensure that all the multimedia services are optimal. "These include streaming video, mobile TV, web access, messaging, and obviously voice, which must meet with high customer expectations."