Delivering
on promises under the sea
From Djibouti to Madagascar, Mozambique to South Africa, East and Southern Africa have been transformed over the last year, as SEACOM and TEAMS (The East African Marine System) land and go live. There is still plenty more to come over the next twelve to eighteen months in the shape of EASSy (Eastern African Submarine Cable System), GLO1 , WACS (West African Cable System), ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) and LION (Lower Indian Ocean Network).
There is a clear need for international bandwidth to connect Africa to the rest of the world, bringing fiber optic cables and terabits of capacity to the continent. Internet penetration is on the rise across the continent, with Kenya at 8.1%, South Africa at 9.4%, Nigeria at 6.8%. However, the average across sub-Saharan Africa is around 5%, extremely low when compared to rates in the US of 75% and in Europe at 48%.
Service providers and carriers have a huge opportunity to provide less expensive, better broadband which will in turn set the scene for business and consumers to demand more bandwidth. On the consumer side there are surging demands for Internet in Africa, where ISPs and mobile operators can deliver products and services, such as high definition TV, peer-to-peer networks and IPTV.
Major investment flows are turning that capacity into value-add services and applications. There are opportunities to develop the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or software development industries, for example – industries that require constant, secure, reliable, fast and cost-effective telecommunications.
Pricing has been one of the most debated issues around the capacity delivered by the new cables. Carriers are seeing increased volumes, but the last mile can still pose a restriction to delivering services to consumers. Will Africa consume all of the new bandwidth expected or will investors have a long wait for their return?
The key opportunity is to turn the new bandwidth into meaningful products and services in order to drive whole industries and regions forward. As the first investor in SEACOM, and currently the only company able to offer MPLS services at any point or end-to-end on SEACOM, we are already working to transform the landscape of African connectivity, and will be leading developments on land and sea.
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Belgium