With 500 participants evenly spread across Lagos, provider of wireless broadband services to business and residential users, Swift Networks Limited, at the weekend, announced the commencement of rigorous tests of its 4G WIMAX network and back-end systems in Lagos.

   An official statement from the company said the participants were selected based on their very heavy usage and dependence on broadband Internet for their business and lifestyle.

The trials were aimed at demonstrating the ultrafast 4G Broadband download speeds. The participants will also test the network’s multiple services (Internet, telephony, fax and video) and the new and revolutionary multiple user modem that creates a Wi-Fi cloud for every User’s office or home without the need of an external router. Some of the company’s 18 bank customers are participating in the test-drive, as their branches are being interconnected in “Virtual Links” running on SWIFT’s Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) mechanism on the new 4G WIMAX core infrastructure.

Chief Operating Officer, Chuma Okoye said the company incorporated the results of various market researches in designing its new 4G WiMAX network. “On completion, it will be 10 times bigger than our current network, and we will continue the expansion, in tandem with the demand for our services to sustain the speed advantage our brand seeks to bring to the market. We have also commissioned a new and more robust multi-service billing platform that will ensure that our customers are billed accurately and timely. This upgrade is specifically for speed but has incorporated other very important elements required for a totally improved customer experience.”

Okoye said the tests would not only stress the company’s new billing, customer relationship management and accounting systems accuracy and user friendliness, but also showcase the unique advantages of SWIFT’s new revolutionary multiple service and multiple simultaneous user wireless modem, while highlighting the benefits of improved international bandwidth availability in Nigeria to business and residential users.

Philip Sonibare, assistant general manager, Consumer Sales and Marketing, noted that lack of broadband speed Internet access remains the major pain of Nigerian customers.

“We believe that we have cracked this problem with our new 4G WiMAX broadband service which will provide our customers with a very fast, reliable and affordable Internet service that works where and when they want. 83 per cent of our current test participants already see a service that is faster than anything else they have experienced so far. And this is before the final network optimization that will be undertaken before we go live and commercial.

“Accordingly, services like YouTube, Skype video calling and similar services have a network built specifically for them,” said Sonibare.

SWIFT is building the most dense wireless broadband access network infrastructure (based on the WIMAX 802.16e protocol) to bring the benefits of improved international backbone bandwidth capacity to Nigerian businesses and homes. Availability of sufficient last mile connectivity is now the bottleneck in the Nigerian broadband value chain and responsible for the current slow connection speeds and high subscription rates experienced in Nigeria. SWIFT is already connected to MainOne, Glo 1 and SAT-3 for bandwidth capacity availability and redundancy purposes.