First Homeland Security WİMAX Application(MOBESE) in Turkey

Developments, studies and researches about WİMAX technologies are continuing as you can download the latest report here in Weekly Clip Report of Wimax Forum.

What I would like to remind today is about latest advances in city-wide surveillance & security applications (MOBESE – Homeland Security) provided by the police authorities. As we remember, in 2005, first MOBESE system was implemented in Istanbul using GPRS infrastructure. But in 3 years, MOBESE system couldn’t have been expanded to other cities. It has been discussed that there were faults about the usage of technology and also some political conflicts.

However, this year, there has been improvements in MOBESE system not nationally but locally in small towns of Turkey. First in Kütahya, and then in Kırıkkale, Samsun and Konya. In those cities, first Wimax based MOBESE systems have been installed.

The first installation was successfully managed by Global Forte, Redline Communications’ certified integration partner in Turkey. You can view Redline’s RedMAX WİMAX technical solution report in Kütahya here.

With this non-line-of-site solution, the Police in Kütahya will have better video surveillance quality comparing with wired solutions. Another advantage is that there will be minimized costs of system broadening. Also, operating costs will be mostly cut with WİMAX technology.

In my next post, I would like to write about government-grade wireless and mobile solutions in the world and possible adaptations to Turkish institutions. (You can find a short copy of Nortel solutions here) I wanted some documents and papers from governmental institutions and some companies, hopefully they will provide some useful info to write about this topic.

Ericsson Consumer Lab / Turkey Report 08

2 weeks ago I was in a panel in TIME 08 Istanbul conference. It was about the market and consumer research of Ericsson for Turkey. There were really some interesting parts that I would like to share. Moreover, I also want to specify my ideas about the results.

First of all, the research is based on the data from 1000 consumers in a large age scale from different socio economic profiles. According to the report, Turkish consumers are so interested in new technologies but technology usage is under the world average. Maybe that can be related with the per capita net income like the other countries in the same interest group, India, Egypt, Brazil. The usage of high speed internet access and laptops is increasing, unsurprisingly. Cause, in the last 5 years, we are living a great change from dial-ups to wireless and mobile broadband.

In the report, there’s an important part about the usage of technology. Like the Russians and Italians, Turks love to use the new technology with the help of someone. I think it’s quite noteworthy. In my opinion, the reason is basic. We are used to the visuality instead of the wordings, technical drawings or procedures. As an example, let’s say I have bought a new mobile phone. I will probably prefer asking a friend how to use it rather than reading the manual or searching how-to sites. But still, this is my personal idea according to my observations.

On the other hand, Turkish internet users mostly struggles with uploading, downloading, chat and social networks. Maybe this proves the big numbers in Facebook, Msn Messenger and file hosting sites. Another interesting result of internet (non) usage is 20% of candidates don’t use internet and don’t think to use in the future.

Now, let’s have a look in the results of the mobile&fixed line statistics. A big amount of people have both mobile and fixed lines. For example, in India and South Africa, most people only use mobile phones. Maybe in Turkey, fixed line usage can be traditional. As a very easy example, a Turkish family immediately fixes a line after moving to their new house. But at the same time, mobile usage is on the tops. 97% of people talk on the phone and 63% of them send a SMS at least one time a day and average durations and numbers are increasing continuously.

What about mobile broadband ? Only 19% of people know what 3G is. However, half of these people are eager to use mobile services every day. And the propensity shows that mobile broadband will be much more used than fixed broadband.

All these results show that here in Turkey, there’s a great market potential of mobile services. People are willing to use it if the services are user-friendly, easy to understand and cheap or free. As the VoIP is more and more in our lives, soon SMS / Voice will not be the money earning areas. With the help of 3G, 4G, WİMAX, LTE, etc. solutions, value added services and the providers of these services will be on the stage. These developments will also change the way of doing business. If we analyse the youth potential of Turkey and the demand of using mobile&internet services, we can feel the excitement about the more connected, faster, more flexible and converged country.

ps: You can download the whole report HERE (Turkish version) : Ericsson Consumer Lab Turkey 2008

Let the world connect !

From now on, I will be sharing my earnings through this blog : “telcoscope” What I aim posting here is to share my searches, my ideas and my knowledge. Personally, I just believe that the future will be shaped by internet, mobile, telecommunications or shortly technology. The idea “connecting people” and “easing lives” is so enthusiastic that I enjoy it more and more…

I will try to post ever so often and try to learn more and more…

Please feel free to contact me about any topics here. Moreover, I will be so glad to hear from you…