ISPs beat mobile operators to LTE in Africa

WiMAX used to be the technology of choice for data insurgent challengers but now they seem to be shifting to LTE.

West African ISPs Surfline (in Ghana) and YooMee (Cote d’Ivoire) both look like stealing a march on the mobile operators with LTE roll-outs early next year.

Russell Southwood spoke to YooMe Africa’s CEO Dov Bar Gera about what the company is looking at doing.

YooMe is a privately held Swiss company that has two African ISP operations, one in Cameroon and the other to open shortly in Cote d’Ivoire. In the past CEO Dov Bar Gera has set up and sold ISP operations in Eastern Europe before moving his focus to Africa.

Its Cameroon operation has deployed WiMAX 16e and it claims to have covered 85% of the population in the country’s two main cities, Douala and Yaounde with 20 base stations. Its main competitors are the two mobile operators (MTN and Orange) and a handful of smaller ISPs.

It has taken significant market share, having around 20,000 out of the 50,000 broadband subscribers in the country if you define broadband as over 512 kbps download speed. Overall Bar Gera estimates that there are probably around a million Cameroonians who use the Internet at least once a week.

But there is a cap on growth as the monopoly international bandwidth provider Camtel has not yet reduced its wholesale prices:”Because of this monopoly, international bandwidth is 5-7 times more expansive (than in other more competitive countries)”. Obviously higher wholesale prices lead to more expensive retail prices, which in turn means a smaller market.

YooMee’s next move is to roll out an TDD LTE network in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan. It will launch a network of 35 base stations from Alcatel Lucent in the second half of February, which according to Bar Gera will give “good coverage in populated areas. We will also be looking at the lower income segments.”

He’s quite dismissive of WiMAX vs LTE comparisons:”Subscribers don’t care whether it’s WiMAX or LTE, they want to know the speed and price of the service. In Cote d’Ivoire we will be delivering up to 2 mbps.”

source: www.bussinesstech.co

African ISPs steal march on LTE

YooMe is a privately held Swiss company that has two African Internet service provider (ISP) businesses, one in Cameroon and the other to open soon in Côte d’Ivoire. Its CEO, Dov Bar Gera, has set up and sold ISPs in Eastern Europe, but his focus now is Africa.

YooMe’s Cameroon operation has deployed WiMax and it claims to have covered 85% of the population in the country’s two main cities, Douala and Yaounde, with 20 base stations. Its main competitors are the two mobile operators, MTN and Orange, and a handful of smaller ISPs.

It has taken significant market share, having about 20 000 of the 50 000 broadband subscribers in the country if you define broadband as 512kbit/s or faster. Overall, Bar Gera estimates that there are probably around a million Cameroonians who use the Internet at least once a week.

But there is a cap on growth as the monopoly international bandwidth provider, Camtel, has not reduced its wholesale prices. “Because of this monopoly, international bandwidth is five to seven times more expansive [than in other more competitive countries].” Obviously, higher wholesale prices lead to more expensive retail prices, which in turn means a smaller market.

YooMee’s next move is to roll out a time-division duplexing long-term evolution (LTE) network in Côte d’Ivoire’s capital, Abidjan. It will launch a network of 35 base stations from Alcatel Lucent in the second half of February, which, according to Bar Gera, will provide “good coverage in populated areas. We will also be looking at the lower income segments.”

He’s quite dismissive of WiMax vs LTE comparisons: “Subscribers don’t care whether it’s WiMax or LTE. They want to know the speed and price of the service. In Côte d’Ivoire, we will be delivering up to 2Mbit/s.” This speed is significantly less than Smile Telecom’s 6Mbit/s service. Prices have not been finalised yet but are likely to be in the US$32-51/month range, which seems competitive.

source: www.techcentral.co

ISPs beat mobile operators to LTE in Africa

WiMAX used to be the technology of choice for data insurgent challengers but now they seem to be shifting to LTE.

West African ISPs Surfline (in Ghana) and YooMee (Cote d’Ivoire) both look like stealing a march on the mobile operators with LTE roll-outs early next year.

Russell Southwood spoke to YooMe Africa’s CEO Dov Bar Gera about what the company is looking at doing.

YooMe is a privately held Swiss company that has two African ISP operations, one in Cameroon and the other to open shortly in Cote d’Ivoire. In the past CEO Dov Bar Gera has set up and sold ISP operations in Eastern Europe before moving his focus to Africa.

Its Cameroon operation has deployed WiMAX 16e and it claims to have covered 85% of the population in the country’s two main cities, Douala and Yaounde with 20 base stations. Its main competitors are the two mobile operators (MTN and Orange) and a handful of smaller ISPs.

It has taken significant market share, having around 20,000 out of the 50,000 broadband subscribers in the country if you define broadband as over 512 kbps download speed. Overall Bar Gera estimates that there are probably around a million Cameroonians who use the Internet at least once a week.

source: www.bussinesstech.co 

Alcatel lucent betting up IP networking and LTE

Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) is planning to sell its enterprise segment consisting of switches and communication gear. This is the second time in the span of three years that the company is trying to sell its enterprise unit. In 2011, the company tried to sell its enterprise unit but succeeded in selling call center unit, Genesys, for $1.5 billion. The reason the company wasn't able to sell its enterprise unit was the heavy cost requirement to restructure the unit, as it involves the labor union and associated pension obligations. Apart from pension obligations, the company's service offerings under the enterprise unit are outdated. Alcatel-Lucent's competitors, such as RingCentral and 8x8, provide an upgraded version of cloud based phone services. The company is planning to divest around $1.36 billion worth of assets and dispose non-core assets in order to increase its investment in IP networking. It plans to increase its investment in IP networking and ultra-broadband services to 85% of its total R&D investment by 2015. By 2017 data traffic on metropolitan access and aggregation networks may increase to 75% from the current 57%. The growth in data traffic provides Alcatel-Lucent with a great opportunity. Alcatel-Lucent recently entered into a partnershipwith Qualcomm (QCOM) to develop small cells for ultra-broadband wireless access.

In the third quarter, revenue from IP routing, terrestrial optics, and ultra-broadband access solutions increased 7% to $777.95 million. I expect the revenue from IP networking and ultra-broadband will increase in 2014 due to growing data traffic.

Expanding 4G network

Alcatel-Lucent is also looking to expand its reach in the 4G LTE network. The company signed a deal with YooMee in November to deploy an end-to-end TDD LTE solution including wireless backhaul and evolved packet 

source: seelinglfa.com

LTE opens up African telecom markets

The introduction of long-term evolution (LTE), a next generation high-speed technology in telecommunications, has brought many new entrants into the market, which are expected to create additional pressure for existing cellular network operators, according to Daniel Jaeger, the vice-president for Alcatel-Lucent in Africa.

“The only difference is that they are not trying to be a full mobile operator. They are merely data players,” Jaeger said, adding: “It’s going to be a tough competition. The new operators focus specifically on the data niche.”

Existing wireless operators that include local telecoms giants Vodacom and MTN are shifting attention to monetising data traffic as voice revenues dwindle.

Jaeger was speaking on the sidelines of the AfricaCom conference in Cape Town, which started on Tuesday and ends today. The event is an aggregation of the communications and technology industry in Africa.

Alcatel-Lucent is currently rolling out LTE, which succeeds third-generation, or 3G technology, in partnership with operators on the continent. Yesterday, the global French telecoms equipment firm announced a new partnership with YooMee Africa, formerly 4G Africa, a privately held Swiss company that provides wireless broadband access in Cameroon.

YooMee holds licences in several countries on the continent and will use Alcatel-Lucent equipment as its main partner when it expands over the next six months.

According to Jaeger, the roll-out of LTE across the continent is, however, scattered. In South Africa, Vodacom was the first to launch LTE solutions for consumers last year. It was followed by MTN.

Cell C, Telkom Mobile and Neotel are also currently expanding their LTE sites.

LTE had become “a fundamental part of growth in Africa where there is no copper infrastructure” similar to Telkom’s in South Africa.

source: www.iol.co