The Opportunities Are There
While the African satellite services and equipment market looks more promising everyday, doing business in the region is still a matter of sorting out what seems viable, what really works and what may yield more headaches than profits.
VoIP, for example, is too much of a gray area beyond the realm of private network services, according to DiscoveryTel's Langreney, who adds that Africa is also four to five years behind South America in terms of rural telephony. Despite recent inroads by several companies, he points to a lack of frequency coordination as one of the biggest obstacles to any large-scale deployment of rural telephony VSATs and fixed wireless systems.
Langreney emphasizes that service providers in Africa are often unprepared for the very rapid shift by their customers from what was planned as an asymmetrical business model to a far more symmetrical model. "Very quickly, the traffic can become symmetrical. This requires a lot of return channel capacity to deal with chat and FTP traffic," says Langreney. "In addition, a lot of extra equipment including modulators and demodulators must be added to hubs to support the often unexpected increase in TDMA channels."
Some big obstacles loom in the African market in general. While most African countries consider satellite-based services vital for their development, they may remain a bit hesitant as they await the creation of a worldwide market for lower cost terminal equipment based on a common standard and the establishment of a greater degree of interoperability of satellite systems.
"In terms of market access, it is important to note that the African market, while not closed to satellite operators, is generally viewed as an environment in which the satellite operators have skimmed the cream by only targeting the profitable corporate customers for their VSAT services, without contributing to the universal service obligations that are imposed on incumbent telecommunications operators," says Toumi.
The emergence of a common standard and true industrywide interoperability may seem closer to reality, but much remains to be done in this regard. Regardless, these issues may not really be the most influential elements or points of resistance in the evolving African satellite equation.
"The biggest obstacle to doing business in Africa, as far as the satellite industry is concerned, is the lack of adequate financing and human resources," says New Skies' Kabanda. "Funding for new companies and existing companies looking to expand is scarce. In addition, finding experienced satellite professionals on the continent can be difficult."
The opportunity for more aggressive and more innovative public/private sector partnering is there, and now the satellite industry has to decide what to do about it. Although the industry as a whole will not exercise control over its destiny in all instances, there are new organizations such as AVU when it comes to training more technicians, for example.
With the United States planning to spend $15 billion on fighting AIDS in Africa over the next five years, the scope of this program alone suggests a far greater role for the satellite industry in such important areas as telemedicine and distance education. Africa needs more satellite assets for a variety of reasons and the industry needs to keep lowering the bar to ensure that those assets are deployed quickly.
Sidebar
At Mountain View, CA-based interWAVE Communications International Ltd., the door is wide open in Africa for its satellite-based GSM/GPRS network extension technology. One of its most recent projects involves Vodacom Congo in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of more than a dozen customers that interWAVE serves in nine countries.
Regarding Vodacom Congo, the plan is to expand service coverage in the Bas-Congo province of DRC, which is accessed via the strategic Atlantic port of Matadi. Like many other countries in Africa, the DRC is lacking when it comes to terrestrial telecom infrastructure. While the total population of the DRC is roughly 60 million people, there are only an estimated 20,000 landline phones in operation.
"Backhaul via satellite is expensive, but it is the only option available in most cases. Our advantage is that we can deploy our wireless solution in the local city, including compression capabilities, which substantially reduces the amount of satellite bandwidth required to do the job right," says Severine Wailly, a spokesperson for interWAVE.
Operators are looking for quick ways to extend their coverage while maintaining a high level of value-added services to their customers and vendors have to activate a wide range of value-added services such as short messaging and voice mail instantly in new service areas. Time is a precious commodity in Africa. Many countries are subjected to torrential rains on a seasonal basis, which can impede the installation and start up process. So for vendors, there is always an emphasis on the need for a rapid deployment of the extended cellular infrastructure, and this often entails seamless integration with already-deployed intelligent networks (IN).
"We typically deploy pockets of network extensions for 3,000 to 5,000 new end users at a time, and this figure can be much higher in some deployment configurations. Additionally, we have developed an interface for IN integration that enables our customers to keep their services offering consistent to their end users across the regions covered," says Wailly.
Peter J. Brown is Via Satellite's Senior Multimedia & Homeland Security Editor. He lives on Mount Desert Island, ME.
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