Comments on report “Options for terrestrial connectivity in sub-Saharan
Africa”
Notes:
1- See report under the Infrastructure and Connectivity section of the
Resources section of the website.
2- These comments have been shared with Bengt at SIDA, Bjorn at KTH,
Mike Trucano at Info Dev
I have read the reports “Internet for Everyone in African GSM Networks”
and “Options for terrestrial connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa”.
Let
me point out at the beginning that my analysis of the reports separates
very distinctly two parts of the telecommunications network- the
“access” network that connects directly to the user and the “backbone”
or national network that aggregates traffic to and from the users. The
usage of these terms in my comments is in line with the description I
have given above.
Let me say that overall, the reports do present an interesting and
feasible scenario for the use of internet over mobile networks. The
first report in particular highlights the possibilities that the wide
coverage of GSM networks in Africa afford to start connecting many
people to the Internet. This is laudable because few people ever
consider that they can get connected by GSM. However, connection over
GSM should only be a stop-gap, initial (catalytic if you like) measure
because it is a narrowband access system. We should not believe that we
have solved Africa's connectivity problems because people now have the
potential to connect to the Internet with this narrowband technology.
Today's and future applications in education, science, technology,
commerce, entertainment, medicine, research etc require are
increasingly becoming bandwidth intensive. Narrowband communications
will not do. What Africa needs is a broadband access system. As I will
point out in my detailed comments, broadband access for Africa is
increasingly becoming a possibility that can be achieved without
spending huge amounts of money with the new and emerging wireless
networks coupled with a strategic deployment of fiber networks. Let me
get into more details with my comments now. My comments will mainly
touch on the later report (Options for terrestrial connectivity) as it
relates to the deployment of fiber in Africa.
It is a fact that mobile phone or GSM networks with extensive coverage
offer a possibility to provide internet access to anybody who has a
phone or other enabled device. GSM through GPRS/EDGE enhancements offer
a feasible data “access” technology. For Africa, this mobile technology
offers a stepping stone for many Africans to get connected. However, we
can not and should not get complacent- this technology and related
mobile phone technologies can not and should be not be an access
technology of first choice for data communications because a) they were
designed for voice and voice traffic always takes a precedence over
data, b) of their limited data transmission capacity and c) the
emergence and increasing availability of equally affordable, easy-todeploy, broadband capacity technologies such as mesh WIFI and WIMAX. In
fact, the African mobile phone providers know this- that is why they
are all currently studying, trialing or rolling out WIMAX systems. I
will come back to this in exploring the various observations and
conclusions the report makes.
On the national backbone network end, the report on options for
terrestrial connectivity explores the existing backbone networks in
Africa and makes interesting observations about the appearance of wide
spread availability of GSM/ mobile backbone infrastructure. This
backbone infrastructure has been built by the mobile operators and is
based on microwave radio relay transmission infrastructure. The report
then makes a number of observations and conclusions, some of which I
find disturbing because they can be misleading and distract people from
thinking about strategic choices for African broadband networks. I will
explore some of these observations and conclusions by way of making
some general comments in the sections that follows.
Yes, GPRS and EDGE provide a feasible access technology that can be
widely deployed in very short order. However, this technology can not
be a backbone technology nor can it be used for anything beyond simple
communications services. This is because the data rates for GPRS and
EDGE (as the authors acknowledge realistically about 40 kbps and 120
kbps) is very low for anything but basic email and web browsing and
these rates don’t even take into account sharing/ contention of the
links. Even then, the data will always play second fiddle to voice in a
GPRS/EDGE network because the network design prioritizes voice over
data. In short, the existing mobile telephony technologies do not have
the capabilities to deliver the type of high capacity access at low
cost required to stimulate the development of a significant and
innovative ICT industry or indeed the kind of capacity demanded of
today’s consumers and applications. The mobile phone companies know
that Internet over GPRS/EDGE is inadequate for today's needs or
applications- that’s why they have grudgingly taken up and are
deploying WIMAX (also possibly because they don’t have enough capacity
on their GSM networks to provide any meaningful internet access
services).
WIMAX with mesh WIFI is fast becoming a feasible technology that can be
deployed as fast and at a lower cost than GPRS/EDGE while providing
true broadband access. Broadband access for Africa should be the aim
and norm and not the exception. Why is it that while every home in the
developed world moves to broadband access, Africans should be relegated
to narrowband communications only? Mobile providers, with their
existing investments in towers and power systems, have a competitive
advantage when it comes to deploying WiMAX and mesh WIFI. They should
and are taking advantage of this competitive edge to provide broadband
access. They should be encouraged to do so by African governments. Yes,
GPRS and EDGE provide a feasible access option for areas where no other
infrastructure exists. However, this can only be a short term solution
and one that can not be considered “good enough”. Just like VSAT, these
mobile data technologies should be technologies of last resort. BTW, in
Namibia, we have explored and proposed the use of the mobile network
(using GPRS and EDGE) to provide access to schools that do not have
access to other wireless (primary WLAN and CDMA) technologies or have
access to ADSL.
The report acknowledges that “low-cost and widely available
international bandwidth is a prerequisite for ICT services to take off
in sub-Saharan Africa”. What it does not acknowledge is that low cost,
widely available, highly reliable, nation-wide, high capacity access
and backbone connectivity is probably more important for developing ICT
services for sub-Saharan Africa. There are numerous sectors and
applications that would benefit from nation-wide, low cost, high
capacity access and backbone connectivity: education (including
distance learning), research, banking, online transactions, intra and
inter-company communications and transactions, general e-commerce,
local government (e-government) services, agriculture (the backbone of
most African economies), and entertainment, arts and culture industry.
These sectors and applications for any country would most benefit from
access and national backbone connectivity and not (necessarily) from
international connectivity! I believe that the need for (more)
international capacity is real but it is over hyped at the expense of
the need for national/ regional capacity. Imagine the local content,
services and applications industry that would be spawned if there was
widely available, high speed nation-wide connectivity (backbone and
access).
In fact, national bandwidth with its attendant local content and
applications industry would finally enable Africa and Africans to more
equitably participate in the global “information society” or “knowledge
economy.” It would enable Africans to become both exporters and
importers of data, content and services rather being only importers as
the case is today. The national infrastructure required for these
developments to take off, grow, expand and to be sustained requires
both high speed access technologies as well as super high speed
national backbones. Narrowband access technologies like GPRS/EDGE might
be a starting point because of their current potential wide
availability (given the wide coverage of GSM networks) but will not
lead to innovation, creativity and growth in ICT applications, content
and services because of their limited capacity. Of even more critical
importance to the development of a local, innovative and revolutionary
ICT industry in African countries will be the backbone transmission
networks- these must be capable of very high capacities and of cost
effective upgrade to match the surge in demand once the ICT industry
takes off. Only fiber optics can guarantee very high, almost limitless
capacity and relatively lower cost upgrades. Microwave radio relays on
their own will not do.
I find the conclusion that “unless demand from the mobile sector is
included, there is insufficient demand to financially justify fiber
optic cables” extremely misleading and frankly disturbing. I believe
that the ICT industry, services, applications and content (of which
mobile telephony while being the dominant piece of the ICT pie at the
moment is nevertheless actually a very small portion of the overall
potential ICT pie) in Africa have not developed because of lack of
infrastructure capable of delivering the required capacities at
affordable cost and consistent reliability. It is impossible to measure
this demand for ICT services, applications and content in Africa
because the enabling/ basic environment- widely available, high
capacity, low cost infrastructure coupled with innovative business
models- just does not exist. It’s a little bit like the proverbial
"chicken and egg" dilemma. It is the same reason that it was impossible
to forecast the demand for mobile phone services in the early days! The
original mobile telephony demand forecasts were not off the mark- they
were totally wrong, several orders of magnitude wrong. This should be a
telling and loud lesson to authors of such reports that undertake
demand analysis studies for ICTs in Africa.
What is worrying is that this conclusion (not financially justifiable
because of demand) seems to portray the fact that fiber is not good
enough for Africa because “there is no demand”! Why should the rest of
the world, and notably Sweden, massively invest in fiber and not
Africa? The developed world is rolling out high capacity fiber and
replacing all the old microwave radio relay networks with fiber, not
because there is a current demand (actually, there is a current fiber
bandwidth glut in the developed world but this has not stopped the roll
out of more fiber) but because they have their eye on future
applications and services. The ICT applications and services that are
being developed for tomorrow are extremely bandwidth intensive. What is
good for Sweden ought to be good for Africa! Holding back African
countries from investing in high capacity networks such as those
afforded by fiber optics “because there is no demand” is not only
unfair, it is almost negligence. It is this kind of thinking that will
only widen the so called “digital divide” between the developed and
less developed worlds.
The report seems to draw conclusions from a comparison of mobile
telephony providers’ and the incumbents’ operations. Yes, the
difference in operations, coverage and efficiencies is stark and leaves
the mobile phone companies shinning as stars. The report notes that
the mobile providers have built their own extensive transmission
networks because “their cost of building their own capacity is much
lower than to lease transmission lines from the incumbents”. Further,
the report notes that the cost of deploying and upgrading microwave
transmission facilities is much less than the costs of building fixed
line facilities thus mobile operators prefer this to laying fiber. The
fact that incumbents have not managed to provide the mobile providers
with a transmission backbone, or that the mobile providers have built
their own transmission networks does not mean that mobile providers are
the answer to Africa’s ICT “gap.” Just as mobile phone technology took
the incumbents by surprise and has relegated the incumbents to
obscurity, newer and lower cost technologies like WIMAX and mesh WIFI
(helped with the convergence to IP) coupled with high capacity fiber
backbones are already beginning to make mobile companies seem like the
incumbents of old! Actually, governments must act to ensure that these
“new incumbents” do not hinder the adoption of new, cheaper and more
powerful technologies or the entry into the market of more innovative
players.
The conclusion that transmission networks built by mobile companies in
countries where mobile coverage is around 80% (estimated at about 23%
of the African countries from the report) are “geographically adequate”
is extremely misleading whichever way it is interpreted. Firstly, the
report does not mention anywhere the reliance of mobile phone companies
on VSATs for backhaul links. VSATs with their expensive, inefficient
relatively low capacity capabilities are completely unsuited as a
backbone technology. Secondly, the report does not even consider (as it
acknowledges) the capacity or sufficiency of capacity on these backbone
networks. With these transmission networks using microwave radio relay
technologies, the availability of capacity to handle both data and
voice on a truly large scale (multi-gigabit) is questionable.
Certainly, the ability of the mobile networks to upgrade cost
effectively to handle very high data transfer capacities such as those
required for research, education and telemedicine and even more
important future innovative and bandwidth-intensive applications is
highly questionable. "Future-proof", high capacity backbone networks
can only be guaranteed with the deployment of fiber. Thirdly, such
conclusions pay, if any, scant attention to the licensing service
requirements that sometimes drive such wide coverage say in places like
Uganda. The mobile phone company must show that it is providing
“national” coverage- it is questionable that in these circumstances,
that the transmission capacity is anything to write home about. The
mobile phone company is only doing what it is required to do by lawprovide national coverage and charge and will charge high costs to
recoup investments made.
The issues of “not enough demand” or lack of financial justification
for fiber are just a distraction from the strategic considerations that
African governments must make in stimulating the development of
innovative and creative ICT industries for overall economic
development. I have already tackled the issue of demand above. The
issue of financial justification is also linked to demand. However, I
should add that the deployment of fiber is becoming a much cheaper and
affordable option even by any standards. In the first instance, costs
of deployment can be lowered substantially (estimated at about 30% and
lower of the cost of laying underground fiber) by deploying fiber over
existing telephone poles, street lights, electricity poles, gas
pipelines. African countries do not have to copy developed countries by
deploying underground fiber- they can more easily and cheaply deploy
overhead fiber. The development of optical Giga bit Ethernet
technologies that do not require as many electronics (repeaters/
amplifiers) over long distance fiber links has also made the deployment
and use of fiber relatively cheaper than 5 or say 10 year ago.
The report criticizes national governments in Africa that are trying to
build their own national fiber backbone networks because they are
“often forgetting that communications are in the hands of private
companies”. This is shocking. I would have actually thought the report
would applaud African governments for finally taking the initiative to
undertake some strategic investments. African governments at last
understand that unless a widely available, nation-wide, low cost, high
capacity network is in place, the development of a local ICT industry
and the leverage of technology to benefit education, health, governance
and private enterprise will not happen. Fiber offers the only futureproof route. Mobile companies or indeed the private sector can not be
relied upon to provide these networks because in their narrow minded
push for profit maximization, such networks are not “financially
feasible” given the existing “demand.” And even if they did, such
networks would be run as monopoly assets which would not help!
The report notes that regulatory constraints do not allow mobile
service providers to resale their transmission backbone capacity. The
report however fails to mention or acknowledge or consider the evidence
in countries where the mobile phone companies also hold Second National
Operator (SNO) and other “public network” licenses such as in Uganda
which allow them to resale capacity on their transmission links. It is
not hard to imagine that even if mobile providers were to develop such
networks, they would be “closed” to competition- the African mobile
provider has become another incumbent. The report also neglects to
mention or explore a corresponding “government interference syndrome”
(my words!) that is afflicting the developed world (including Sweden) the emergence of publicly funded networks such as municipal wireless
and fiber networks in many parts of the developed world. Of course,
these networks have drawn the curse of existing mobile companies,
incumbents and other ISPs all claiming that governments have no
business running telecommunication networks or as the reports puts it,
governments should not forget “that communications are in the hands of
private companies”. Why should governments in Europe and the rest of
the developed world be looking at financing their own
telecommunications networks? The authors of the report should be tasked
to explain this. In the same vein, why exactly shouldn’t African
governments look to finance their own networks? Perhaps the authors
might also care to shed more light on this.
These distractions aside, African governments can (and in my view
should) indeed finance the development of national fiber backbones
which would be availed on an open access basis providing a level
playing field for all existing and potential service providers and
stimulating the emergency of new and innovative services and
applications. Financing these networks does not mean that the
government should run these networks! Governments can subcontract the
running of these entities to the private sector. Even if they did run
the networks themselves, government owned and run networks can still be
run on a commercial, efficient and profitable basis. As Sweden has ably
demonstrated in its utilities and ICT (fiber networks) sectors,
governments can successful own and run businesses through a number of
approaches including outsourcing, joint ventures, and
commercialization. As an aside, actually privatization (leaving things
completely in the hand of private companies as the report suggests),
without complete deregulation, does not seem to have provided any
noticeable benefits for Africa but that is another (long) debate.
African governments can also develop new licensing regimes that enable
the development of national infrastructure and a level playing field.
Most likely, African governments are going to have to do bothundertake targeted investments in infrastructure while revising their
licensing regimes- because the development of a reliable high speed
national telecommunication backbone is a strategic consideration for
overall economic development.
In conclusion, what is clearly lacking from these conclusions is
strategic long term considerations for Africa. If we believe that this
is a knowledge economy or an information society, then surely ICT
infrastructure should be treated as a national asset. Forward thinking
national governments should be doing everything possible to develop
their national ICT infrastructures to a level that stimulates the take
off of their national ICT industries. It is a realization that some
African countries appear to have made. The development of widely
available high capacity fiber optic national backbone networks coupled
with high capacity broadband access technologies such as mesh WIFI and
WIMAX offer a promising future. The notion that fiber is not good
enough (due to low demand) for Africa is the kind of thinking that
continuously relegates Africa to the doldrums of underdevelopment.
My two cents.
Alex