The fixed network can be a key differentiator in the future of Africa's crowded telecoms market.
That was the view of attendees at the Next Generation Telecoms (NGT) Africa Summit 2011, which was held in Nairobi earlier this year. The next NGT Africa Summit will be held in Cape Town from 13 to 15 September.
The summit will serve as an arena for senior level executives to engage in clear and focused dialogue with their peers and examine their management objectives for Africa's telecoms landscape.
At the Nairobi summit, hosted by GDS International, around 100 C-level participants looked at a range of topics, including the future of the fixed network in the continent.
The attendees concurred that the fixed network has the significant economic advantage to converging the mobile and fixed architecture.
Speaking after the event, Eric Valentine, head of networks Vodafone Ghana, said a major stumbling block, however, is that some markets have too many operators.
“For example, Ghana has around 200 000 active operators, including MTN, Tigo, Vodafone, Kasapa and Airtel. The benefits of a fixed-line network can be diluted by too many operators,” said Valentine.
Similarly, he added, the advent of mobile technology has meant that investment in fixed technology has been greatly reduced. “So what we did was push people into the fibre network to keep the numbers high. But, unfortunately, this didn't work so well.”
Vodafone Ghana even considered selling the fixed-line part of its business in the West African nation.
“Data growth in fixed ADSL will hopefully bring in more revenue and add huge value. What we're doing now is targeting the high value cabinet areas. We're re-training people to interact with their customers.
“We also need to be smarter on workforce management and use tolls in OOS [operations support systems] and BSS [business support systems] to do this. Call centres need accurate information because the fixed network is very complex with switches as old as 15 years,” Valentine added.
Looking ahead, Valentine says the next step is to shut down all of the legacy exchanges and evolve to Internet protocol transport using customer protocol network and new multi-protocol label-switching infrastructure.
“We can then look at backhaul on fixed assets and femtocell technology for improved indoor coverage. There has been a huge surge in data through dongles, so we will be upgrading the Internet gateways. We think that simplifying and modifying is the way to go.”
Valentine revealed that Vodafone Ghana plans to start by replacing ageing equipment and setting off an aggressive sales campaign for broadband services.
“Customer obsession is the key; the digital divide is closing and data is growing, so we need to ensure that we're not isolated with only one option.”
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