Back To Basics
Fabrice Langreney, COO at Hartford, CT-based DiscoveryTel, which acquired Warsun International in January, is placing a great deal of emphasis on voice traffic in Africa. "Data in Africa today is not profitable enough. No operator is making money there on data via satellite DVB. Voice is paying the bills, and as many aspiring service providers in the region are waking up to this fact, they are coming back to the basics and realizing that they cannot offer data services without offering voice first," says Langreney.
UAE-based Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Co. is making strides with its satellite phone services in Africa. Approximately 30,000 to 40,000 of Thuraya's total subscriber base of 110,000 is in a zone extending from North Africa as far south as Tanzania, according to Thuraya spokesperson Sana Bagersh. In addition, after months of pilot tests, Thuraya announced in early May that Intracom would supply Thuraya with 500 outdoor payphones, 10,000 chip cards and a payphone management system. Public calling offices are part of Thuraya's game plan here as well.
"We are looking at coin operated and prepayment options for our payphones. In Nigeria, we can report that our handsets are already being used like payphones with various people charging multiple users by the minute," says Bagersh. "Africa is a very sophisticated telecom environment in general where you can see people adjusting very quickly to new concepts and technologies. We have been approached by several companies to offer higher speed data via our satellite," says Bagersh.
Big Plans For Africa
VSAT service provider Telkom SA Ltd. in South Africa is moving ahead with an ambitious VSAT project built around the Skystar 360E solution from Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. Throughout the next five years, up to 30,000 360E VSAT terminals will be deployed all across sub-Saharan Africa. Customers will have access to broadband services via Ku-band and C-band pathways.
Gilat reports that its business in Africa is growing steadily as a percentage of its total business worldwide. In 2000, Gilat's revenues in Africa as a percentage of total revenues were only 1.6 percent. That figure grew to 4.3 percent in 2001 and to 8.3 percent last year, with a backlog in Africa in 2003 (i.e. deals not yet recognized in terms of revenues) that is several million dollars higher than total African revenues for 2002. Continued growth is expected. As far as rural telephony goes, Gilat's rural telephony activity in Africa is about 20 percent of its total rural telephony business around the world.
According to Janna Koretskaya, associate vice president of sales and marketing at Gilat for Central and Eastern Europe, CIS and SADC, the Skystar 360E will join both the Gilat Skystar Advantage and DialAw@y VSATs so that African customers have suitable options with respect to broadband and lower speed Internet access. Gilat is holding up its successful creation of a rural satellite-based telecom infrastructure in Colombia as a model that could be duplicated in Africa, too.
"We are adding additional VoIP modules upon request for our higher speed broadband Internet customers, while at the same time, we are not concentrating on voice specifically," says Koretskaya. "While we do not intend to abandon our traditional large enterprise or rural telephony markets, we are placing a much greater emphasis here on SME (small-to- medium enterprise) and SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) customers in Africa with the Skystar 360E, which can accommodate between 10 and 15 PCs per site."
VSAT and DTH together are quite active sectors in Africa, according to Steve Rich, CT-based Panamsat Corp.'s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"We have two DTH platforms available in the region, PAS 7 and PAS 10. With respect to data networks and two-way IP services including VoIP, we are seeing several local service and teleport operators who are purchasing bulk bandwidth and then packaging their own services," says Rich.
"Our customer base is now much more aware of what services they can put on their products. When it comes to Committed Information Rate, and any required bursting, the customer now tends to want to manage any over-subscribing himself," Rich adds. "Terminal pricing has dropped significantly in the past three years and bandwidth pricing has become more competitive."
Nigeria has taken some time to adapt to a Western style product base, but now such things as Internet caf�s, where customers can send and receive e-mail, have really taken hold. Rich notes that in this fast-paced business environment, the satellite operators cannot afford to turn a blind eye to single terminal installations or smaller circuit transactions. "You push the little guy off at your own risk," says Rich. "As for the hybrid satellite wireless market, it is not clear that this will be economical to operate over the long term."
For Rich, identifying the right mix of products is a challenge. The days of offering bandwidth alone have ended, and now matching solutions-based requirements to a broad mix of customers is the name of the game.
Eutelsat has a longstanding relationship with TV broadcasters in the North African market including public and private sector clients in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt, according to Robin Eliade, Eutelsat's head of commercial sales, African region. All of Eutelsat's fleet of European satellites cover this region. Eutelsat began offering C-Band services last year via 10 transponders on its Atlantic Bird 3 at 5 degrees W. This satellite connects much of Africa to the United States and Europe, along with the the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and the Caribbean.
"We believe that Atlantic Bird 3 is the top choice when it comes to the delivery of very high-quality professional services including TV distribution, VSAT networking, PSTN and particularly GSM trunking," says Eliade. "In the broadband market , we procured a C-band hub for two-way Internet access in 2Q of 2003, and this hub is expected to be operational in mid-2003."
For Ku-band DTH and one way IP services in Nigeria, for example, Eutelsat operates W4, which serves as the Multichoice digital pay-TV platform, among other things. Its W1 satellite offers coverage across southern Africa and it has attracted clients for video distribution and contribution as well as for IP services.
In the second half of 2003, Eutelsat plans to launch its W3A satellite. This will expand Eutelsat's high power Ku-band presence in sub-Sahara Africa, and position the company to address the growing demand both for regional video DTH and distribution, and for IP and corporate services with small terminals.
"This satellite is also equipped with Skyplex onboard processing so that digital carriers can be uplinked individually to a satellite and multiplexed in space," says Eliade. "This could be a particularly attractive feature in a market such as Africa where traffic can be dispersed over large areas."
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