Telecom operators and investors in Africa have expressed worry about the possibility of low demand for use of facilities that come with submarine fibre optic technology in the telecommunciations industry.
A panel of five telecom experts at the ongoing Telecom World Africa 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa, noted on Wednesday that even though the submarine fibre optic technology promised faster speed communications at affordable rates for Africans, there is a danger, most of which will remain redundant due to low demand.
A total of seven undersea fibre optic cables, with an aggregate capacity of 10.94 terabytes (10,940 gigabytes), have landing stations along the entire coast line around Africa.
They each pointed out that the consumption of fibre optics technology was more in data and internet communications than in voice, saying that the high level of illiteracy, low access to computers, poor power supply and its attendant bottlenecks and the inability of carriers to pay for fibre optics raised concerns about how much of fibre optics would be consumed on the continent.
Submarine fibre optic cables landing in Africa include SAT-3, Main One, Glo One, East African Submarine Cable System (EASSY), South Asia Telecom Cable (SEACOM), the Eastern African Marine Systems (TEAMS), and the largest of them all, West Africa Cable System (WACS).
TEAMS, for instance, is being constructed at $82 million; EASSY, $235 million; Main One, $240 million, SEACOM, $600 million, whiles WACS, SAT-3 and Glo One are equally multi-million dollar projects.
On the west coast of Africa, SAT-3, WACS and Main One connects Europe to South Africa, stretching from Portugal, with several landing stations along the western coast of Africa down to the south; Glo One connects United Kingdom to Nigeria, landing in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Ghana.
To the east of Africa, there is EASSY, which connects South Africa to Sudan, with several landing stations along the eastern coast; SEACOM connects France to India, with at least seven landing stations in Africa, from South Africa through the eastern coast to Egypt in the north.
TEAMS links Kenya with the United Arab Emirates, with possible landing stations in Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.
Ms Lucy Quist, Head of Operations of Millicom International Cellular, operators of tiGO, said there was need for operators to create demand for the use of fibre optics, saying that convergence technologies such Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Value Added Service (VAS) on handsets were some of the ways demand could be created.
She also urged operators to collaborate with African governments to raise the level of literacy on the continent to empower a greater proportion of the African population to be able to use modern technology extensively.
Dr Angus Hay, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of Neotel, said even though convergence was a step in the right direction, consumption on mobile handsets would not make much impact, adding that the supply of affordable computers to a greater number of Africans was the way forward.
“African governments also have to consider licensing more carriers to buy more of the fibre optic and spread the technology further inland,” he said.
Panellists also called for broadband internet connectivity across the length and breadth of African states to create the interest of African peoples in the Internet.
Mr Sarat Dutt Lallah, Chief Executive Officer of Mauritius Telecoms, urged African telecom operators to continue to focus on the basics; providing voice and SMS services to the majority of their customers, saying that there was no need for Africans to be carried away by modern telecommunications technology at this time.
“African telecom operators must continue to focus on the basics, while we all make a gradual effort at bringing along the 300 million illiterate people on the continent with the rest of us,” he said.
Mr Ernest Ndukwe, Director-General of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said security was another challenge facing African countries with regard to the submarine fibre optic cables, adding that protection of the cable path from saboteurs needed to be given much consideration.
He said he was, however, confident that by the time all the submarine cables would go live in Africa, there would be use for them on the continent.
Currently, 50 per cent of SAT-3, 40 gigabytes of TEAMS and only four per cent of SEACOM have gone live; Glo One will go live later this year; Main One is due in May 2010 and WACS is due in 2011.
Meanwhile, business processes outsourcing (BPO) companies in Ghana believe that huge redundant capacity of fibre optics cable would boost the country’s chances at winning more outsourcing jobs around the world.
Meanwhile, internet service providers have called on the Government to reduce or completely eliminate taxes incurred by broadband suppliers to make the service available and affordable to all, no matter where they live.
They have argued that by reducing the cost element of the service facility, the country will be on course to achieving 50 per cent broadband penetration by 2015, since the service will become cheap and be affordable.
A World Bank 2009 Information and Communications for Development report says in every 10 per cent of broadband penetration in developing countries, there was a 1.38 per cent growth in gross domestic product (GDP).
A communiqué issued in Accra on Wednesday after a two-day workshop at Dodowa over the weekend to develop a national broadband strategy said taxes, duties and exorbitant license fees hampered growth of broadband service in the country.
The workshop, convened by Ghana Connect, information technology service provider, was to design strategies for the country to achieve a 50 per cent broadband penetration by 2015, as well as increase the broadband bandwidth from current 256 kilobytes to two megabytes per second.
This is expected to contribute at least 6.9 per cent to the country’s GDP, which would lead to a reduction in poverty.
The communiqué called on the National Communications Authority (NCA) to work to reduce the period that it takes to license an operator which currently stands about five years.
It said fibre service providers should develop graduated pricing schemes for international bandwidth to force current bandwidth monopolies to consider reducing their prices.
It said NCA should drive policies that encouraged infrastructure and facility sharing among operators to reduce costs.
It said the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, should ensure that ICT infrastructure plans existed at local levels to facilitate the penetration agenda.
The communiqué said local service providers should develop more voice-enabled options for illiterates to access broadband service.
It also called for the establishment of an independent body recognised by the Government to engage service providers as well as conduct research in areas of realistic interest so as to inform stakeholders and consumers based on the research findings to help set attainable goals for the industry.
Meanwhile, at the workshop at Dodowa, the Government promised to provide fibre-optic backbone throughout the country to facilitate the broadband penetration agenda
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