[Satellite TODAY 05-31-13] Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) is one of the most talked about operators on the planet, and has been on an aggressive growth curve. The company sees Africa as an important part of the equation as it looks to diversify its revenue base. In April this year, ABS appointed Felix Damiba, as its new managing director for Africa. In one of his first interviews since taking the position, Damiba outlines the company’s ambitions for Africa.

Damiba: ABS sees the true potential of Africa. If you take the United States, Europe, Asia and few more countries, they could all fit inside Africa. This gives you the size of the opportunities available in this region taking into account the level of the development or under-development of the continent today.
 

The ABS satellite fleet over Africa provides connectivity and solutions to commercial and government customers. The most important services in the market are cellular service providers, broadcast, government and educational institutions, offshore oil & gas, maritime and enterprise.

 
 

Damiba: Africa is currently served by several satellite and undersea fiber operators. A picture of the capacity available for communications today over Africa is tremendous. The abundance of capacity leads to the creation of a whole new industry for high-speed connectivity from call centers to growing Internet. Most of the capacity available is barely accommodating the requirements of the capital and major cities in the countries. There are cities, villages and rural areas that are still in the dark not only in terms of electricity but in terms of telecommunications as well. So, despite the number of options available there is still a lot to do. Just imagine how many roads, bridges and railroads remain to be built. As the infrastructure become more accessible, the commerce and trade will grow in regions that lack these facilities today. Imagine the number of schools, universities and training centers that need to be constructed; the potential for growth is enormous. This excludes the number of untapped natural resources that arise and present more attractions and opportunities that will come with them.

 
 

Damiba: When you look at the evolution of the telecom industry worldwide, you can easily say that 1990 was the year of fixed line. In 1999 IP became the replacement technology; in 2000 email and data started to overwhelm any network capacity; and 2004 was the start of social networking and the convergence of mobile and fixed. Today, video is still exploding: standard, digital, HD and 3D television. Cloud, 3G and 4G (LTE) combined with monetization are creating a new set of vendors for specialized customers and needs.

In Africa, the liberalization of the telecom sector, the arrival of multinational conglomerates from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas, coupled with the active competition in telecom sector are contributing to the growth of the demand and opportunities. There may be more than 500 million mobile users in Africa today. This number is insignificant and is a very small percentage relative to the total population of Africa, which is now more than 1 billion.
 

The demand for satellite capacity will need to expand to absorb the growth for traditional applications for most of the developed areas where the remote and rural are catching up with the progress made in the metropolitan areas. The satellite by nature is still the most efficient distribution means for broadcast and point to multipoint types of applications. The demand will come from any application that is in line of the nature of the satellite as mean of communications.

 

Damiba: As we recognize that some progress was made in some areas of Africa, the rest to be done is immense. In order to reach the remaining billion users one should look at the underdeveloped and rural areas. The rural areas are often very remote and poorly populated making the business case difficult to achieve. Fortunately, the use of satellite technologies and solutions make it feasible and supports the business case to offer services into the rural areas. The local governments are making available funds for Universal Service Obligation projects to cover the rural areas. This market presents a challenge as well as a good opportunity for satellites to play an important role.
 

Another market of interest is the video broadcast services. This market currently exists, but only on a small scale across Africa. We anticipate that the broadcast market will continue to grow, eventually reaching a critical mass of video households and channels. Once this occurs, we see tremendous opportunity for the video broadcast and pay-TV markets to have similar types of significant growth and success that you see today in most of the developed markets of Europe, Americas and Asia, and will be very well suited for satellite application. ABS has a solid track record of offering video satellite broadcast services and is very well prepared to address these opportunity requirements in Africa.