Africa 2008: New Satellites, New Hopes

Open To New Bandwidth

Robert Bednarek, president and CEO of SES New Skies, sees Africa as experiencing a powerful growth in demand for bandwidth, particularly IP bandwidth, and he labels Africa as the fastest-moving mobile market in the world, creating considerable demand for GSM backhaul services via satellite, among other things. “Internet penetration is still low at around 3.5 percent,” he says. “At the same time, applications such as enterprise WANs, Internet cafes, rural telecommunications, educational networks and basic IP trunking, including [Voice Over IP] telephony, will continue to drive demand. In the medium term, we therefore expect prices to remain rather robust.”

Terrestrial infrastructure simply does not exist over vast areas — “or is hopelessly outdated,” says Bednarek. So satellites often serve as the only viable option, and this absence of any credible land-based infrastructure also translates into an ability to make aggressive leaps forward in terms of wireless and satellite communications technology in general. “We certainly do share with our customers the latest technology trends and consult them on the most efficient equipment to use. New $500 VSAT terminals for example do make a huge difference to a service providers margin. And our broadcast customers are advised to use MPEG-4 compression, carrier-in-carrier coding and improved DVB-S2 modulation techniques to improve efficiency and stay ahead of the competition,” he says.

According to French, at least one undersea cable project will become operational by 2009, and this will have an impact on the IP trunking market in the region. This involves satellite capacity connecting African ISPs to Europe or North America along with termination services for international VOIP calling. “NSR is not claiming the market for IP trunking will disappear, but it will certainly become much weaker than the current demand indicates,” says French.

“In terms of demand, although fiber — and submarine fiber with its sharply reduced pricing in particular — is making inroads, the need to interconnect customers with adequate capacity across borders is playing into satellite’s hand especially when so many potential customers are so far from the beach. That is, they simply have no access to submarine fiber,” says Chenard.

While the SAT3 submarine fiber link connected Western Africa to Southern Africa it did not necessarily result in improved telecom services for all players, says Bakhrani. “Some countries like Namibia that are part of the SAT3 fiber link do not have landing stations, and they have continued to use satellite as the cheaper option (despite the fact that) they have paid to be part of the SAT3 consortium,” he says.

Open To New Bandwidth

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