Ndoroma said this would see Telecom become a leader for business sector and private users in southern Africa.

All devices and appliances will be in place by 2010 with a capital investment of N$1 billion over the next three years.

This major shift in the company's business strategy would secure it 45 per cent of turnover from the new services by 2010.

"A rapid convergence of voice and data networks as well as fixed and wireless networks is prompting communications operators around the world to rethink their business models.

Telecom Namibia needs to reposition itself to remain competitive and expand its products and services, " Ndoroma said.

The new network would cater for fixed and mobile high-speed data transfer, faster Internet services and communication between devices like computers and cellular phones.

Board Chairman Titus Haimbili said another project was to provide affordable computers and Internet access to all urban households by 2010.

Broadband is a transmission medium supporting a wide range of frequencies, typically from voice up to video frequencies.

It can carry multiple signals by dividing the total capacity of the medium into multiple, independent bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a specific range of frequencies.

Telecom's chief technical expert Theo Klein said that CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) would be rolled out within three months.

CDMA is a technology for digital transmission of radio signals between a mobile telephone and a radio base station.

In CDMA, a frequency is divided into a number of codes.

"ADSL which is Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL for short is a high-speed Internet access service that utilises existing copper telephone lines to send and receive data at speeds that far exceed conventional dial-up modems," Klein explained.

"This service will be introduced by Telecom over the next six months."

World Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) would become a new service in the country in nine months' time.

"It enables true broadband speeds over wireless networks at a cost point to enable mass market adoption.

We will reach all those people who do not have a fixed Internet connection," Klein added.

WiMAX is the only wireless standard that can deliver true broadband speeds.

MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching), a widely supported method of speeding up data communication over networks, will also be available in Namibia soon.

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