Major inhibitors facing continent-wide adoption of satellite technologies are dealing with complex broadcasting licences across African borders, and deliberating with multiple African governments each facing their own thorny broadcasting regulation policies. So said Soheil Mehrabanzad, Hughes Network Systems assistant VP for Africa and the Middle East.
Hughs Network Systems is a global provider of broadband satellite networks and services, and has been actively involved in bringing Internet connectivity to rural schools in Africa, including its four-year e-learning project in Ethiopia.
Speaking at the SatCom Africa 2009 Conference, at the Sandton Convention Centre, Mehrabanzad said lack of funding and African government involvement in broadband satellite are creating hurdles for the development of the satellite segment. “Licence fees still remain a challenge in Africa. However, we're seeing trends where governments are looking to ease the regulatory processes. One of the biggest challenges remains the space segment; it is a key component and has to be effectively controlled and managed.”
More bandwidth
With the undersea fibre-optic cables coming in from Seacom in June this year, new bandwidth capacity will bring in more opportunities, such as higher Internet access to the continent, he said. However, broadband satellite technology will not be in direct competition with terrestrial infrastructure such as Seacom's cables, but will rather work together to extend bandwidth to landlocked countries.
“It's always exciting to have extra capacity coming into the continent. There's always peaceful co-existence of satellite and terrestrial technologies, and both can be used in different applications. I predict that this will have economical benefits for businesses and schools. One of the benefits that broadband satellite has over fibre-optic cable is that if the retailers acquire new stores, within weeks they can all be connected via satellite, whereas terrestrial would take months of digging up the roads.”
Satellite can reach far more people in a wider coverage than either WiMax or cable and is more cost-effective, Mehrabanzad said.
The economic crisis has had an effect on the broadband satellite market, he concluded: “While we haven't seen that many projects being totally cancelled, a lot have been delayed. Broadband communication is increasingly becoming a necessity and there will always be a demand for bandwidth, as more bandwidth-intensive applications come to the market and HD TV becomes more popular.”
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