Cape Town, 26 Apr 2007
Gateway Communications is increasing its satellite bandwidth capacity by 84%, to 555MHz, to meet Africa's demand. However, regulatory requirements preclude SA from gaining access, says COO Mike van den Bergh.
Gateway considers itself to be one of the largest independent suppliers of satellite communications on the African continent. It hosts Europe's only Pan-African dedicated network operations centre, from which it runs a virtual private network for its customer base. It supplies services to 79 telephone operators and 900 corporations working in Africa.
Van den Bergh says recent research suggests satellite transponder demand will experience annual growth of 6.7% per year between 2007 and 2010 in Africa and the Middle East. However, supply is only forecast to grow at 3.2% annually over the same period.
He says the satellite services industry is now estimated to have revenue of over $50 billion (R350 billion), and has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 12.8% between 2000 and 2005.
Van den Bergh says because the licensing regime has not been altered to conform with the Electronic Communications Act, SA will not benefit from the increase in satellite connectivity.
"Currently, we only have a VANS [value-added network services] licence and we are hoping that it will be converted to electronic communications services and electronic communications network services licences," he says.
The South African regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA), has stated it would complete the conversion of licences by September 2008. However, to date it has only issued a framework for the conversion and industry is still waiting to see what the actual process entails.
Until that happens, Telkom and Sentech remain the only two entities that can supply international connectivity either through the undersea cables or via satellite links.
Cellular network operator MTN has already informed ICASA that it plans to establish its own international links, although it has not yet said how it will do this.
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