Africa is the fastest growing region in terms of broadband, according to Winston Smith, MD: Southern Africa at Alvarion, speaking during the ITWeb Broadband Conference at The Forum in Bryanston, yesterday.
Smith said though Africa has long been condemned as the 'dark continent', there is hope that the broadband sphere will continue growing faster than all the other regions.
“Research shows that the number of broadband subscribers is expected to increase to 19 million by 2014, which is a massive leap in comparison with the 5.2 million reported in 2008,” he said.
Smith noted the continent was making positive moves, it still distantly lags behind the rest of the world.
“According to an ITU report, per every 100 inhabitants in Africa, only 32 have mobile phone subscriptions while in other developing regions, the ratio is 49 in every 100. For the rest of the world, for every 100 people, 59 have mobile subscriptions,” said Smith.
Furthermore, he said, fixed-line telephone statistics also present a gloomy picture for Africa. He noted that in every 100 people, only one had subscription to a fixed-line telephone, while a mere 0.9 individuals had broadband subscriptions.
In terms of broadband growth, Africa is surpassing the other regions, mainly because there has been an influx of new entrants as well as content players in the industry, Smith said.
He added that networks throughout the continent have also been evolving for some time thanks to network convergence.
customer demands, as a whole lot of new devices have found themselves on the continent.
“On top of that, there have also been significant investments in new submarine and terrestrial fibre that have brought lower costs in connectivity to Africa. When all the cables are connected and operational, price per megabyte will also go down remarkably,” said Smith.
He added that there is also a window of opportunity in both business and the high-end residential sector on the continent, following the evolution of the mass market, as the economies of scale drive pricing down.
Smith also believes wireless technologies will capture a significant portion of broadband opportunities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Wireless broadband is capable of significantly greater reach than any other form of access. For example, WiMax has reached 555 deployments in 147 countries during 2009,” he said.
Smith believes the competition in the wireless broadband sphere will inevitably push down prices on the continent.
In SA, broadband was not rapidly increasing, mainly because the country has scarce radio frequency spectrum available, he said.
“Nationally, SA has 125MHz in 2.6GHz band; 56MHz in 3.5GHz; meaning that 50MHz of the spectrum in 2.6GHz band is unused. Thus, the potential revenue to ICASA for this spectrum is in the order of hundreds of millions”, said Smith.
For the country to get true broadband access, Smith suggested that there should be no more procrastination on key aspects to unlock the landscape.
He also added that SA and Africa as a whole should improve connectivity to rural areas as well as small towns which have traditionally been left out.
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