There is consensus among many government officials and local communications specialists on the need for an African-owned satellite.
By 2006 there will still be less than a 10% penetration of basic telephony in this region.
Professor Stanley Mneney, lecturer, University of Durban Westville
However, the Satellite 2000 symposium hosted by the SA Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) in Midrand last week saw little agreement on what the nature of such a satellite should be.
"Dollar transactions are expensive," said Independent Communications Authority of SA councillor Neels Smuts in his opening address at the symposium. "Transponder rental based on local currency, without a dollar connection, would be very attractive."
Variations of his sentiment have been echoed by communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and others in government, and there is also support from the business market.
SACOMSAT
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the CSIR, is conducting a feasibility study on SACOMSAT, a communications satellite owned and operated by SA. The project is being conducted jointly by the departments of communications and trade and industry, and will focus on rural telephony provision.
Similar studies have been conducted, with the most recent completed in 1991 under the Industrial Development Corporation, without resulting in action, but the departments say satellite technology and launch-space is now cheap enough to warrant at least another look.
"Given the possible economies of scale, it should be possible and cost-effective to use 21st century technology to provide telephone access [in rural areas]," Matsepe-Casaburri said of the possibility in May.
A feasibility report was expected this month.
RASCOM-1
The Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (RASCOM), a treaty-based organisation of 43 African countries, plans to have its own geostationary satellite operational by 2003. Alcatel`s space division has been awarded the build, operate and transfer contract for RASCOM-1, and local business development manager Ian Braid says a pilot will run on an existing satellite during 2001 and 2002.
RASCOM-1 will be owned and operated by the RASCOM-BOT project company, a partnership between RASCOM, Alcatel Space and other equity partners. The company is to be settled by the fourth quarter of this year.
A high performance network is complex, which raises training and support issues.
Peter Spencer, representative, Alcatel Space
The satellite is to provide C and Ku band coverage over the entire continent and Madagascar. It is punted largely as a telephony-enabler, but transponders up for lease are expected to be used for data provision.
But the first RASCOM satellite was originally scheduled for launch by 2001 and some in the satellite industry believe the project may suffer fatally from the delay.
"Requirement may outpace RASCOM in Southern Africa," Alcatel Space representative Peter Spencer told the SAIEE conference. It is not as sophisticated a system as some others, he said, and does not offer the highest possible performance.
On the other hand, he noted, RASCOM will be robust because of its simplicity, possibly more important in the African environment. "A high performance network is complex, which raises training and support issues."
SkyBridge
Spencer was promoting another Alcatel project, the SkyBridge communications constellation. Eighty low earth orbit satellites with up to 18 spot beams each will create a giant worldwide cellular packet network, promising 20Mbps rates on the downlink and 2Mbps upward to customers. Southern Africa should have two or more ground-station gateways to its disposal, with cell diameters of 700km.
Skybridge was intended to be operational in 2001 with 32 satellites, but now expects to have 40 active by the end of 2003 and the entire constellation in the sky by the end of 2004.
Spencer said SkyBridge will offer data to the end-user at three American cents (R0.21) per megabyte, making it commercially viable. He warned that beautifully engineered satellite systems should be seen in the light of history. "You can`t make an Iridium assumption and say 'if nobody else can deliver the product we can charge what we like`. The market won`t handle that."
Iridium, a $5 billion communications venture, filed for bankruptcy in August 1999.
SADC-1
Another proposal its authors say is nothing more than an idea is SADC-1, the Southern African Development Community telecommunications satellite. Professor Stanley Mneney of the University of Durban Westville said SADC-1 offers an alternative solution to providing universal access in Southern Africa.
"By 2006 there will still be less than a 10% penetration of basic telephony in this region," he told the symposium.
SADC-1 would be jointly owned by the 14 SADC countries and each would carry approximately $70 million of the $1 billion price tag.
A single 24-transponder satellite is proposed, with 12 transponders in the C band and 12 in the KU band. The C band will provide 9 600 available channels for voice, while the Ku band allocation is used for data and television transmissions. A single spot beam will offer data rates between 64kbps and 2Mbps.
The community has not yet been approached with the proposal, but Mneney is confident the countries will be interested. "This is not a large cost for them to carry to provide universal service," he says.
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