Philip Ngunjiri
6 July 2008
Nairobi — The increasing amount of broadband capacity in Africa has seen some operators begin to offer "triple-play" - that is voice, Internet and broadcast content - giving rise to satellite pay-TV market, which fits into the continent's existing broadcast and media market.
But according to a new report on Africa's broadband, - African Broadband, Triple Play and Converged Markets - the converged content has come too early to the continent with mobile TV being rolled out in several countries, including Kenya.
With the demand for Internet access continuing to grow at exponential rates on the continent as well as the increased amount of Internet traffic due to multimedia, Internet service providers are now faced with the challenge of keeping up with demand for network bandwidth.
Innovative service providers and equipment manufactures are developing creative solutions for squeezing more bandwidth out of existing frequency spectrums.
Due to the increased demand, says Job Ndege, general manager of Afsat Communications, most service providers offer laughably slow speeds and call them broadband. Because of this, users will continue demanding increased capacity at lower prices, he said.
Afsat, through its iWay flagship brand, is the largest satellite-based broadband operator in Africa with a presence in 28 African countries.
Most consumers in Africa still use the Internet for leisure rather than business. They, therefore, do not want to invest in Internet access services.
"A device that will be able to provide both TV, Internet and voice services will encourage the use of Internet and, ultimately, Internet for business," he said.
The idea, said Mr Ndege, is to have an affordable unit that can do voice, Internet and TV and targeted at the consumer market. This will spur the growth of Internet to the consumer as well.
Many African operators do not focus on the consumer at the moment. Most broadband offers are meant for the corporates and are priced as such, he said.
In the same breadth, the report on Africa's broadband says that Triple Play and broadband will power the next stage of growth for Africa's Internet. Over the next three years, the number of broadband subscribers is set to triple. Operators are about to start marketing the service to individual consumers and begin to offer Triple Play bundles, a service offering voice, Internet and television and film programming for a single price below the overall price of buying three separate services.
All this lays the foundation for much faster retail broadband services and the possibility of delivering genuine Triple Play bundles in Africa.
However, the new Triple Play bundles will be targeted at Africa's middle class homes.
From the consumer survey data in the report, it is clear that a small but growing proportion of Africans have access to PCs at home.
The report, released last week, contains both consumer and industry data covering the key issues that will emerge as broadband growth takes off.
The consumer data covers key questions from national and urban samples in 24 countries from both the high and low-growth markets.
A number of factors are driving this shift in how the Internet in Africa will be sold to consumers.
It will be impossible for operators to maintain high national wholesale rates alongside much cheaper international rates over much greater distances.
An increasing number of African countries are legalising VoIP, which allows the delivery of IP voice services over broadband.
Increased competition in the pay-TV market is opening up access to TV and film programming rights for operators.
"In terms of communication technologies, Africa is increasingly becoming a two-track continent. There are countries where a combination of policy, regulation and investment are producing fast-track changes, of which faster, cheaper broadband and Triple Play are one result.
Then there are those slow-track countries where the attitudes of government, regulators and operators are shutting out investment in newer technologies like broadband," according to Balancing Act's chief executive Russell Southwood, co-author of the report.
Broadband penetration in Africa is lower than what would be expected based on per capita income, says the report. One explanation for this pattern is that broadband services were launched much earlier in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries than in Africa.
However, notes Mr Southwood, "The impact of affordability is magnified further when average incomes are taken into consideration."
Consumer data in the report from countries with higher numbers of broadband users shows that once a relatively cheap and much faster service is available, users make more use of the Internet on a daily basis. They also shift from checking their e-mail and looking at a limited number of websites to doing things such as listening to radio over the Internet and downloading films and music.
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