Jayhun Mollazade was a man with an idea. As an Azerbaijani citizen living in the USA he saw an opportunity to dramatically improve the ageing and archaic soviet telecoms infrastructure of the former Soviet state. Over the past five years, Azerbaijan has put an emphasis on developing its ICT sector and as a result the country now has three mobile carriers along with several ISPs offering ADSL based fixed-line internet connectivity. While the broadband market was growing by 30-40 per cent each year only one of the local carriers was offering 3G services and Mollazade and his partners saw that there was a real opportunity to offer high speed wireless data services.

Much has been said and written of late about congestion in mobile data networks, a subject brought to the fore by the introduction of the iPhone and its subsequent clones. Indeed, the problem has precipitated a whole new sub-section of the OSS/BSS industry devoted specifically to identifying and controlling wireless broadband data traffic. There is potentially an equally serious problem however in the form of congestion on the signaling channel caused by ‘chatty’ applications and the signaling requirements of increasingly complex services running on smartphones.

Sequans, the 4G chipset maker, is working with Malaysian operator Packet One and networking provider Greenpacket to develop reference designs for dual-mode LTE/Wimax devices. The intention is to create a complete eco-system of 4G networking solutions and devices by the end of 2011.

Having lived the first half of my adult life in the UK and the second half in Australia, it is little wonder that I have such a strong affinity with the underdog in a given situation, since both countries have cultures that root for the little guy to succeed over a bigger, stronger opponent.