A pan-African broadband connectivity company, paratus zambia, stated in November 2022 that it had reached an agreement with meta to build 900 kilometres of fibre optic cable across 10 zambian cities by the end of 2023.
According to dataxis, the need for connection in Africa has been growing over the past few years. However, the pandemic between 2020 and 2021 has hampered the development of continuous internet implementation, and broadband penetration remains very low at the local level, with significantly less than 5% of households connected to continuous internet in 2022, and just 1% to fibre.
Nevertheless, efforts to link people to extremely fast internet are expanding. By 2027, according to Dataxis, the number of fttx subscriptions would nearly double while xdsl subscriptions will either stagnate or even decline in some countries.
A two-speed connectivity development is happening in sub-Saharan Africa. One the one hand, by 2022 fibre has already reached the majority of houses with connected people in the most advanced nations.
This is true, for instance, in Kenya, where 53% of regular wireline and wireless internet subscribers receive fibre, compared to less than 5% according to the percentage counted for xDSL access. As a percentage of fixed internet in South Africa, fibre subscribers make up 33% as opposed to xDSL’s 4%.
However, in the majority of countries, xdsl continues to be the primary connection method used to link houses in Africa to the internet. In Burundi, xdsl will account for 94% of all ongoing internet subscriptions in 2022, while fibre will account for just 1%. In the Congo, there are 35 percent xdsl subscriptions and 18 percent fibre subscriptions.
The majority of individuals in nations where xdsl currently predominates are expected to switch from xdsl to fibre by the year 2027. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, xdsl subscriptions are anticipated to remain flat even while fibre subscriptions must increase by two by the year 2027.
Preferred community operators in Africa tend to follow a similar pattern: initial fibre deployments occur in the most significant cities of the countries, typically in capital cities, followed by interior installations in the other major cities.
According to dataxis, this strategy is explained by a more robust capacity market in certain regions, as well as by the simplicity of installation and price reduction.
For instance, the vivendi africa organisation (gva) expanded its network to the second-largest city in the United States, bobo-dioulasso, in may 2022 after launching its canalbox fibre provider in the burkinabe city of ouagadougou in june 2021. In Gabon, gva released its fibre supply in libreville in October 2017 and then in Port-Gentil in June 2022, following the same model.
The power market is more crucial in major cities where many successful and connected businesses have established offices, where the population density can create important economies of scale for fibre operators, and where isps will find the majority of families with high electricity purchase costs, required to join the pricey fibre provider.
The next step might be to expand those services to rural areas, where the majority of Africans (58%) still reside but which are still not well connected to broadband.
If the current value limits are successfully overcome, the low connectivity rate and high demand constitute an important possibility for all gamers.
The challenge is to balance fibre rollout with profitability at the dawn of a potential market. Mergers allow network providers to expand their influence in the countries with the best fibre installations, such as South Africa.
Vumatel, the market leader in South Africa with 1.5 million fiber-connected houses in the second quarter of 2022, and Dark Fiber Africa (dfa) are both owned by Network Investment Ventures Holdings (civh).
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (icasa) approved the takeover of 30% of those organisations on November 9th, 2022, with the help of vodacom, which itself contained roughly 157 000 homes in the second zone of 2022.
The goal is to outperform the fibre operator openserve, which is closely behind vumatel with 800 000 homes exceeded in the second zone of 2022, and to consolidate the current fibre insurance. Dfa and vumatel will continue to operate as two exceptional organisations in the market.
Additionally, in February 2022, vumatel sold a 45 per percent ownership in the operator herotel, whose network at the time contained roughly 150,000 families.
Therefore, remgro confined, which has a 57 percent stake in civh, also owns seacom, which in March 2019 bought a 100 percent stake in operator Fiberco.
Given that it is predicted that the variety of fibre subscriptions in South Africa will nearly double between 2021 and 2027, those corporate transactions are the evidence of a more than dynamic market.
Despite all of the promises made by the South African market, dataxis points out that this example is still a ways off from covering the entire country.
Few businesses are taking the riskiest bets to combat the lack of infrastructure and high setup costs, as is most evident right now by starlink, the company that employs South African entrepreneur Elon Musk. Starlink started its commercial operations in nigeria and plans to cover the world’s most remote areas with about 2,000 satellites in orbit.
Although the bundle costs $599 in the United States, it will only cost $99 in Nigeria. Even though the amount continues to be extremely high for the area, it shows a propensity for making it affordable.
The employer now has no intention of stopping there after acquiring licences in South Africa in 2021, Mozambique in February 2022, and Malawi in October 2022. However, the fee is still far too high given the average income of the community.
When a company wants to connect more Africans to the internet, Starlink isn’t necessarily the first to try a new strategy.
A stratospheric balloon project to bring 4G to the people of Kenya was abandoned in 2021 by Loon, a division of alphabet, the company that owns Google. International Cellular, which has licences in Tanzania and Zanzibar and hopes to get one in Kenya, has recently adopted this idea.
Both the company’s wireless hotspots and Meta’s aquila project, which aimed to provide internet via high-altitude drones, were shut down in 2018. All of these initiatives are projected to be discontinued by the end of 2022.
Therefore, the difficulties of broadband connectivity in Africa are at the centre of significant investments for operators that wish to dominate this lucrative market, whether via fibre, satellite, or drones.
It is no longer appropriate to see the deployment of broadband as a singular problem in each of the United States, but rather as a whole for the entire area.
Fiber networks frequently cross borders due to operators’ presence in multiple nations or joint ventures, but they also bring the economies of Africa closer together and hasten the region’s overall development.
Although fibre seems to be the most likely development because of its alluring amortisation, dataxis believes that all changes are beneficial to connect all populations of the area, even the most remote ones, to a great, dependable, and affordable community.
The financial perspectives that can be opened up by moving forward with connectivity to global networks will surely continue to encourage activities from operators who are aware of the location’s untapped potential.