Wireless internet in Cyprus is doomed

Sir,
I wonder did your readers know that in Cyprus the use of wireless Internet is doomed!

We are a UK company that formed a Cyprus division to bring wireless Internet to communities that didn’t have ADSL, and offered free wireless connections to all schools that didn’t have ADSL. The government officials couldn’t understand why we wanted to do this and couldn’t see how we’d make money, but that was our concern, wasn’t it?

Having applied for a licence a year ago, only to be told there wasn’t any legisaltion in place yet, we were informed in March 2004 that we couldn’t have a licence, as the use of 802.11 b/ g/ a standards, which are being used so effectively elsewhere in Europe and the USA, would be effectively banned here as no external antennae would be allowed and that users of wireless networks would have to register and pay an annual
licence fee!

I wonder how Cyprus will deal with all the laptop users and all those folk who have bluetooth mobile phones as they work at the same frequency?

It was interesting to note that the guy we wrote to and who never replied was also still on the board of CyTA.

Sadly, as of March 2004, a civil servant informed us that only 6 per cent of the people able to have ADSL had taken it up.. We are sure that our service would and still could revolutionise education, especially in rural areas. We couldn’t help but get the feeling that they didn’t want our idea to succeed.

In the occupied areas there are companies already offering this service (not associated with us) using a standard adopted by the UK TelCo regulator for community wireless use.

We’d like to know why we couldn’t launch a service that would compliment CyTA’s i-choice service and promote the use of high speed broadband, especially as CyTA is way behind with it’s promised roll out dates for ADSL.

Mark Smyth
Technical Sales Manager, Satmesh

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.