Johannesburg, South Africa–From telemedicine to financial transactions, top end users and satellite industry executives of VSAT technology networks shared, this past week at SatCom Africa 2005, their insights on what is succeeding and what is not.

“The market demand for rural telephony remains strong for satellite-enabled platforms throughout Africa,” said Jock Anderson, CTO of Accelon. “Global and regional providers of satellite capacity tend to be able to offer a compelling economic solution for certain rural telephony platforms in Africa.”

But rural telephony is not the only opportunity for satellite in this region. Anderson, along with other speakers here at SatCom Africa 2005 said IP access, GSM backhauls and some Direct-to-Home broadcasting opportunities remain high on business plans.

“Some 52 satellites have coverage of Africa or parts of the continent. Almost 20 have specifically targeted African coverage,” Anderson added.

But increased cheaper pricing was posed this year on using satellite solutions for network communications. “Although hardware costs have come down and import duties on IT goods have been relaxed somewhat, the cost of international bandwidth still remains relatively high due to content being hosted mainly outside the African continent. Recently, standards-based wireless solutions with greater coverage capabilities have been introduced to the telecommunications market,” said Steve Lewis, executive of technical product development for Telkom SA Ltd. in South Africa. “Looking ahead to 2008 and beyond, Telkom anticipates satellite business will predominately be driven by applications. Falling equipment and bandwidth prices will lead to a greater penetration in the large, medium and small office/home office market segments, In Africa, an increase in usage by governments and multinationals is expected.”

For example, Dan Ameyo, CEO/Postmaster General of the Postal Corp. of Kenya, shared with attendees the benefit satellite brought to Kenya’s postal service. “We installed a total of about 600 satellite dishes countrywide. The network also supports a telephony system that facilitates communication between postal outlets across the country. The network has greatly reduced our expenditure on telephony services by almost 50 percent,” he added.

The VSAT system installed by the Postal Corp. of Kenya covers the entire country. Within the system, 400 outlets of the 900 countrywide have been installed with the full range of the system’s components.

But much more work is still needed, according to panellists, for further satellite network success within Africa. Further deregulation needs to take place among many of the countries, a reduction in satellite transponder time cost needs to be accelerated and an evening out of the economies of scale between what the mid-sized businesses can afford and the typical VSAT cost structure. Whatever the case, all agreed that satellite networks will continue to exist within Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure, but its long-term, mass-market expansion will ultimately come down to cost reductions both on the space segment and the ground equipment segment.

–Nick Mitsis