"Female engineers aren't men in skirts. Rather, they've their own set of needs, dreams, ambitions and God-given talents that they bring to their role as engineers."

These are the inspiring words of Telecom Namibia's General Manager of Service Provisioning and Assurance, Chie Wasserfall, when she delivered a motivational talk to a group of female engineering students at the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek on March 12.

A former senior lecturer of engineering at the Polytechnic of Namibia and one of the notable few successful female engineers in this male-dominated industry in Namibia, Wasserfall was invited as one of the guest speakers to mark the "Women in Engineering Day" hosted by the Polytechnic's School of Engineering yesterday.

Latest figures show that of the 847 professional engineers, corporate engineers, engineering technicians and their counterparts-in-training registered with the Engineering Council of Namibia as of 31 January 2009, only 11% of them are women.

With only a very few female engineers in the country, Wasserfall cautioned the budding female engineers that pursuing a career in this field is not easy, but possible with dedication and hard work.

"Let me assure you that once you step out and complete your degree, there will be a job. It all depends entirely on you. Increasing globalisation, new markets, and changing employment patterns also mean that an engineering career is now a truly international one," Wasserfall said.

She urged the students to defy all the stereotypical prejudices, biases and cultural viewpoints that portray women as being incapable of entering this male-dominated field of engineering.

Wasserfall added that the ways in which to break this mould of being branded as "just a woman" is to use their inherent strengths and abilities by thinking "outside the box" as engineers.

"Stay being woman, don't try to be a man. The biggest mistake that a woman would do is to act what exactly stereotyping society expects us to do. However, never ever use your woman side to get want you want because in a male dominated environment, it just won't work," she said.

"In the end, it's women themselves who set boundaries on what they can achieve. As long as they dream and pursue, then they can attain anything they set out to accomplish. There are many advantages to being female engineers and scientists. Let's leverage them well."

The female engineering students were visibly spurred by Wasserfall's powerful talk and described it as inspiring and valuable.

"I believe there's no limit as to what we women engineers can do and I feel we can achieve greater things," said third-year B-Tech Electronics student Findano Shikonda.

"Out of a class of 30 engineering students we're only four girls! There are very few female students because they're afraid and think that engineering is difficult. But that isn't the case," added Peneyambeko Haifeke, a first-year engineering student.

The celebration of "Women in Engineering Day" was jointly organised by the Polytechnic of Namibia and Women in Engineering International to serve as a platform for networking, mentoring, boost self-confidence to overcome prejudice against women in engineering.

Telecom Namibia recently launched Infinitum Plus, an innovative and world-class service for enterprise customers and large organisations.

Infinitum Plus, which is designed to provide high-quality connectivity to customers for their data applications, was unveiled by Information and Communication Technology Minister Joel Kaapanda at a ceremony attended by a number of MPs, businessmen, CEOs of parastatals, senior government officials, ICT-savvy individuals and media representatives in Windhoek on 27 February 2009.

Known as also as "Carrier IP/MPLS-VPN," Infinitum Plus is a new enterprise service is based on IP Multi Protocol Label Switching, the high-speed data-carrying method for public networks. Using labels to route data packets across the Internet, MPLS has become popular worldwide, particularly for bandwidth-intensive applications, thanks to its ability to bridge legacy network technologies (i.e., ATM and frame relay) and multiple infrastructure types (Ethernet, DSL, fibre optics) with next-generation IP systems.

The launch of Infinitum Plus is a clear sign that Telecom Namibia is committed to rollout top-notch services to its customers.

"Creating new generation products and services and delivering those great communications experiences - that is our mission, our commitment, and our future," the company's board chairman Joseph Iita, said at the launch of Infinitum Plus.

In his speech, Minister Kaapanda applauded the company for its commitment to provide Namibia and its citizens with a world-class telecommunication infrastructure as well as new generation products and solutions.

He said the launch of Infinitum Plus by Telecom Namibia came after a heavy capital injection of about N$120 million for the deployment of an IP/MPLS network.

"[You] deserve a feather in the cap," the Minister said.

The Infinitum Plus solution enables Telecom Namibia to seamlessly connect customers to their headquarters, branch offices, remote users and business partners all in a secure, consistent and robust network environment.

"We're providing a solution that's optimised for high availability use in a VPN environment," said Armando Perny, Senior Manager: Product R&D at Telecom Namibia. "This is a huge opportunity for the company to offer cost-effective and robust solutions to existing customers and open up new solutions for new customers," Perny added.

The touted advantages of VPN services as opposed to build-your-own are they require less corporate manpower and training, lighten maintenance and management burdens, and support fully meshed networks without the complexity and cost of virtual circuits that are required with frame relay.

The upside is that customers can use the IP/MPLS VPN service without worrying about what access method is available. It also lets them tie into the VPN from virtually any site that has a network connection.

Infinitum Plus services are presently available in Keetmanshoop, Walvis Bay, Tsumeb, Oshakati, Luderitz, Gobabis, Otjiwarongo, Rundu, Katima Mulilo, Swakopmund and Arandis.

"With Infinitum Plus, Telecom Namibia will give users the best services at the highest value for money," said Frans Ndoroma, Managing Director of Telecom Namibia.

The 9th Southern Africa Telecom Operators Bilateral Meeting (STOBM2009) started in Windhoek on February 23.

Namibian deputy Minister of Information and Communication Technology Rafael Dinyando officially opened the meeting.

The STOBM2009, being hosted by Telecom Namibia brings together experts in the telecommunications industry to network and exchange ideas on how find ways of speeding up the development of ICT in southern Africa.

The deputy Minister said urgent collaboration is needed to redress the growing current imbalances and general challenge of low ICT penetration in the region. He said the challenge is that telecommunications is dynamic and not every country in the region is able to keep abreast with the new technologies.

"A platform like yours where ideas and experiences can be shared thus becomes a veritable ground for passing on necessary skill and knowledge that will help others keep pace with emerging trends in telecommunications development. In this era, information has become the most critical resource for social and economic development for every nation," Dinyando said.

"The region is facing low teledensity, low electricity supply, poor road network and little clean water. The public sector simply does not have enough resources to plug this infrastructure gap. Apart from all effort put forward by SATA to interconnect the region, cross-border harmonisation remains weak, affordability remains an issue, concerns over foreign investment prevail and the local capital is inadequate," he said.

Telecom Namibia Board Chairman Joseph Iita said it is imperative for the region to jointly integrate and become more competitive by exploiting all the opportunities.

"One key issue is to make interconnectivity of our various countries a reality in order to achieve the goal of increased intra-regional trade and universal access," Iita said.

"It is not far fetched to state that a more comprehensive regional connectivity will mean increased intra-regional traffic from which all operators will benefit. When information flows easily and cheaply so does commerce."

In an effort to accelerate ICT to people of SADC, SATA Executive Secretary Jacob Munodawafa said that SADC Telecom operators must ensure that the latest technology is provided with quality of service.

"Quality of service is a very important aspect in our business especially as we migrate from TDM based technology to packet based IP technology like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Most of the operators are already using Voice over IP for terminating regional and international voice traffic and we need to make sure that the quality of service is acceptable by our customers."

The 4-day meeting which ends on Thursday is geared towards cementing strategic and operational mutual relations of Telecom operators in all areas of ICT from technical, operational, commercial to fraud management issues.