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HIPSSA Project. Support for Harmonization of the ICT Policies in Sub-Sahara Africa. Measurement of the impacts of the arrival of submarine cables in Africa. Isabelle Gross – Balancing Act. Introduction Abundance of capacity Falling wholesale prices of international capacity Redundancy
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HIPSSA Project Support for Harmonization of the ICT Policies in Sub-Sahara Africa Measurement of the impacts of the arrival of submarine cables in Africa Isabelle Gross – Balancing Act
Introduction Abundance of capacity Falling wholesale prices of international capacity Redundancy What’s the picture at the retail level? Table of contents
Introduction: Safaricom’s data subscribers and penetration rate
4 Abundance of capacity - several countries with access to 3 and up 5 submarine cables - Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, SA - overcapacity??? Maybe - next challenge for many African countries is to bring the capacity inland (e.g.Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc..)= denseand redundant national backbones
5 Abundance of capacity … … and reinforce cross-border terrestrial connections Examples on next 2 slides: * Phase 3 Telecom in West Africa (network that is planned to span through Nigeria, Benin, Niger and Togo * Liquid Telecom: Owned by Econet in Zimbabwe, its network currently covers Zimbabwe and reaches into South Africa, into Botswana and into Zambia.
7 Liquid Telecom’s cross border terrestrial fibre network
8 Falling wholesale prices of international capacity - in particular in countries where there are now 2/3 submarine cables (but not necessarily the case in countries where there will be only 1 cable = need for regulation) - prices are as low as US$100 per Mb at STM1 level or even lower (3 years ago in Nigeria 1MB was US$2000/3000 while today it is US$100) - prices will fall further (ACE+WACS) - Ask participants what has happen in their country?
9 Falling wholesale prices of international capacity ► the next challenge… … - bring international capacity at an affordable price to landlocked countries - transit costs too high in comparison to international capacity: 3 to 4 times more and sometimes up to 10 times more
10 Redundancy ► more and more African countries have now more than 1 exit route but still some African countries left with one single exit route (Sierra Leone, Liberia, etc) ► improved quality of services with less downtime (in theory 100% uptime but they have still been long outage on the East as well as on the West Coast – the case of Benin and its impact on neighbouring countries)
11 Redundancy ► more and more African countries have now more than 1 exit route but still some African countries left with one single exit route (Sierra Leone, Liberia, etc) ► improved quality of services with less downtime (a theory but they still have long outage on the East as well on the West Coast – the base of Benin and its impact for neighbouring countries)
12 What’s the picture at the retail level? ► retail prices have come down but less than expected: more bandwidth offered to customers but not necessarily cheaper but prices are coming down ► encourage the development of wider range of data offerings: take up of mobile data services (South Africa, Kenya, etc…) ► encourage the development of content, value added services, e-government applications and services
13 What’s the picture at the retail level? ► The challenge is to get data services in less populated and rural areas - not necessarily a profitable business and - will need some sort of public funding
14 What’s the picture at the retail level? What possible market dynamic for data services?
Thanks a lot for your attention Union Internationale des Télécommunications International Telecommunication Union