broadband vital for new sustainable development

Broadband infrastructure, applications and services have become critical to driving growth, delivering social services, improving environmental management, and transforming people’s lives, according to a new Manifesto released this week by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and signed by 48 members of the Commission, along with other prominent figures from industry, civil society and the UN family.

“Overcoming the digital divide makes sense not only on the basis of principles of fairness and justice; connecting the world makes sound commercial sense,” the Manifesto reads. “The vital role of broadband needs to be acknowledged at the core of any post-2015 sustainable development framework, to ensure that all countries – developed and developing alike – are empowered to participate in the global digital economy.”

Signatories to the Manifesto include Commission Co-Chairs President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and business magnate Carlos Slim, co-Vice Chairs Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General, and Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director-General, along with prominent members of the Commission including European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes, business leaders including Anne Bouverot (Director-General, GSMA), Michel Combes (CEO, Alcatel-Lucent), Sunil Bharti Mittal (CEO, Bharti Airtel), Denis O’Brien (CEO, Digicel), Hans Vestberg (CEO, Ericsson), and Sun Yafang (Chairwoman, Huawei), UN heads of agency including Kathy Calvin (CEO, UN Foundation), Helen Clark (Administrator, UNDP) and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (Executive Director, UN Women), and prominent technology advocates including Academy-Award winning actor Geena Davis, Mo Ibrahim (Chairman, Mo Ibrahim Foundation), Youssou N’Dour (musician and Minister for Tourism & Leisure, Senegal), Jeffrey Sachs (Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General for the Millennium Development Goals & Director, Earth Institute, Columbia University), Muhammad Yunus (Founder, Grameen Bank and Nobel Laureate), and many others.

The Manifesto will be presented at a side event of the 5th session of the United Nations Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, to be held at UN headquarters in New York later today. It follows on the heels of a new report, Transformational Solutions for 2015 and Beyond, which was prepared by a Broadband Commission Task Force and launched at the 8th meeting of the Commission on 21 September 2013.

source: www.biztechafrica.com

in Africa , Bharti shifts focus from volume to value

The Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel is shifting from a volume-based strategy to a value one in Africa.

Africa has been a higher average-revenue-per-user (ARPU) market.

For the September quarter, it saw signs of growth in Africa after three quarters on a shift from just customer acquisition. Now, the strategy involves focusing on markets with high-value customers and high-ARPU retail customers. The company is trying to draw people to data-based services.

“Initially, Airtel needed to grab subscriber market share to penetrate the market. Now, it is time to inculcate value out of it,” said an analyst with a management consulting firm.

During the quarter, Airtel’s customer base in Africa increased three per cent, while the monthly churn dropped to 6.6 per cent from 6.7 per cent the previous quarter. Voice ARPU increased four per cent, while voice usage a customer rose seven per cent compared to the previous quarter. During the quarter, data customer base increased 13 per cent; at $1.5, a 15 per cent increase was seen in data ARPU, while data usage per customer increased 21 per cent. Total data usage on the network jumped 34 per cent. Year-on-year, data ARPU rose 46 per cent, and total MB on network increased 97 per cent. But, voice ARPU declined 15 per cent on the year-on-year basis. “Clearly, Airtel is focusing on data-based services, which is the under-penetrated segment and would boost net realisation in the coming quarters,” said a telecom analyst with a management consulting firm.

Meanwhile, Airtel’s net realisation in Africa, voice and data, fell in July-September. While voice realisation dipped two per cent to 3.3 cents, data realisation (an MB) dropped four per cent to 1.74 cents, compared to the previous quarter. “After three tough quarters, the Africa market is again buzzing and showing good growth momentum. The mobile customer base is growing again, rates are stable, mobile internet is growing and mobile commerce is booming,” Managing Director Manoj Kohli had said, after announcing the quarterly results.

Revenue from Africa operations rose two per cent to $1.1 billion during the quarter, against $1.09 billion a year ago.

Quarter-on-quarter revenue growth for the Africa business was about 5.4 per cent, primarily backed by net addition of about 2.18 million subscribers and a rise of seven per cent in minutes of usage on the network. At 29.6 per cent, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) margins for the Africa business were almost flat.

“The revenue growth in Africa reflects the inherent potential in the world’s most promising continent. I am also pleased to see the evolution of Airtel Money, a significant service in geographies that are relatively under-banked,” Mittal had said in a statement.

A Bharti Airtel spokesperson said, “For us, Africa is a growth market and we are there for the long term. We have always said we wanted to bring affordable and innovative services to Africa and that is what we are investing in. We have already done the hard work by overhauling the network and technology across our operations, and are now focused on growing the market. We have the largest 3G network in Africa, across 14 countries, and have rolled out Airtel Money across all our 17 markets.”

source: www.businesss-standard.com

investment opportunities in sub saharan African telecoms

 After a wave of regulatory penalties, including fines and a ban on promotions, Nigeria's mobile operators have announced plans to expand and upgrade their networks to cope with strong subscriptions growth and increasing data usage.

Business Monitor expects this trend to continue over the medium term as the market is forecast to add around 45mn new subscribers in the five years to 2017.

Meanwhile, consolidation and, subsequently, transition to LTE technology appears to be a growing trend among tier two telecoms service providers in Nigeria. Business Monitor sees this as a positive development as, through consolidation, tier-two operators are able to gain scale for bigger network deployments while the transition to LTE should enable them to compete better with 3G HSPA+ offerings from the GSM operators.

Kenya's mobile operators will prioritise high value services over aggressive network expansion into underserved areas to improve their profit margins. This view is supported by the first ever quarterly contraction in the country's mobile market during Q113 following the deactivation of unregistered lines, a development that underscores sluggish new subscriber acquisition.

Business Monitor expect Orange's tower deal with Eaton to open the market for tower sharing services, which should benefit from operators' need to improve cost efficiencies.

Intense competition in South Africa's mobile market due to increasing market saturation and cuts to the mobile termination rate (MTR) is taking its toll on mobile ARPUs, with available data showing a sharp decline in ARPUs in H113.

As there is no end in sight to the ongoing price competition in the basic voice segment, Business Monitor expect mobile network operators to increase their focus on non-voice services, including mobile data and corporate solutions, in order to sustain revenue growth.

The continued delay in the implementation of local loop unbundling (LLU) in the fixed-line sector poses a downside risk to investment and growth fixed voice and data services.

source: www.ciol.com

Quality data for African progress

Ghana’s Statistical Services will stage African Statistics Day this week to draw attention to the importance of basing development on accurate data.

Under the theme “Quality Data to Support African Progress”, the day, on 20 November, will highlight the importance of quality statistics for evidence-based decision-making for socio-economic development, said the government.

A statement issued in Accra by David Yenukwa Kombat, Chief Statistician, the Ghana Statistical Service would use the occasion to disseminate monographs that had been prepared from 2010 Population and Housing Census data. 

source: biztechafrica.com

liquid telecom provides Somalia first fibre cable link to the world

a number of undersea fibre cable systems have landed on the shores of the African continent, it’s easy to assume that any country on the continent has reasonable access to these cables. More so countries in East Africa that have a huge shoreline. Easy to assume yes, but not the case with Somalia. Apparently, owing to conflict, Somalia has so far had no access to a fibre cable and has had to rely on expensive satellite links for internet.

That will now change as Liquid Telecom, the continent’s largest terrestrial fibre network operator, has finalised a deal with the Somalia’s Hormuud Telecom to link the mobile operator to its fibre network directly. The cable link will become Somalia’s first fibre connection and is set to improve internet speeds in the horn of Africa.

The announcement was made at the ongoing AfricaCom conference in South Africa by Liquid Telecom chief executive, Nic Rudnick. Liquid Telecom will link Somalia to cables that land in Kenya where it already has presence.

Rudnick also disclosed at the conference that his company will spend $250 million over the next two years in its mission to connect people and businesses on the continent to the internet. Liquid Telecom’s fibre cable network in Africa now spans 17,000 km connecting Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and several other countries.

source: www.techzim.co

telecom firms draw battle lines as race for subscribers hit again

The battle lines for subscribers have been drawn by local telecom services providers as the race for clients hits fever pitch. Innovation and offering cheap services seem to be part of the winning chip.

According to Ebenezer Asante, the MTN Rwanda chief executive officer, deploying low cost infrastructure could help boost these figures, especially attracting the rural folks to own phones "as services will be cheaper since telecoms will incur low costs," he said.

Asante, however, noted that though Rwanda has the lowest call rates in the region and Africa generally, the local telecom sector faces a big challenge in attracting the 'small' subscribers.

"We need creative solutions, innovative network deployment and different business models to be able to serve these customers (those in the lower bracket). It is important to understand that the same solutions that were used to serve the first two thirds may not be attractive to this group of customers," he explained.

October statistics from Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) show that the subscription rate is improving, with 63.7 per cent of the population having access to a mobile phone.

The figures, accounting for subscription recorded from January up to end of September, show that mobile telephone penetration increased from 5.9 million subscribers (55.1 per cent) in January to 6.7m or 63.7 per cent in September.

Pioneer telecom firm MTN still leads with 3,636,976 subscribers followed by Tigo at 2,099,807 subscribers, while Airtel had 973,000 subscribers.

But all the three telecom firms are upbeat that they will attract more subscribers. They argue that a new wave of applications and 'mash-ups' of services, driven by high-speed networks, social networking, online crowd sourcing and innovation, will help them achieve this target. Mobile phones are increasingly being used to carry out financial services, which has transformed the lives of the rural masses. They are also using different client-targeted promotions to entice subscribers.

source: allafrica.com

telecom- led relief in the philippines

The rapid deployment of engineers by international and national telecommunications companies to hard-hit areas of the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan demonstrates the private sector’s increasingly vital role in relief efforts.
 
With more mobile phone subscriptions than people in the Philippines (107 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people), and industry estimates of at least one billion text messages sent daily, analysts say the telecommunications industry is not only able to re-connect the estimated 3.8 million displaced people with their families, but is also an ideal vehicle for raising relief funds.
 
Telecommunications play a critical role in disaster preparedness and response by disseminating early warning messages, tracing survivors and providing vital aid information, said Kyla Reid, the head of disaster response at the London-headquartered Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA), a trade organization representing more than 800 mobile network operators worldwide.
 
Within 72 hours after Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) hit the central Philippines on 8 November, international mobile companies Vodafone and Ericsson deployed teams equipped with emergency kits to help local providers get the network running again.
 
Philippine mobile carriers Globe Telecom and SMART Communications together control 99 percent of the national mobile phone industry. “We worked with various government agencies and even the military in order to get network equipment parts and infrastructure up and running,” said Ma Yolanda Crisanto, Globe's head of corporate communications.

Vodafone Foundation, the company’s charitable arm, sent a 100kg portable instant network contained in four suitcases to set up satellite terminals in Palo region, just south of Tacloban.

source: irinnews.org