Ghana To Lead LTE Deployment In Africa

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Submarine fibre cable

Meanwhile, Alcatel Lucent recently helped Globacom to launch a high-capacity submarine fibre-optic cable system, built to carry data and internet traffic at high speed between West Africa and the rest of the world. The 9,800km long cable network, known as Glo 1, starts in Bude on the north coast of Cornwall, and reaches all the way to Nigeria, serving 14 West African countries on the way.

Glo 1 runs on a huge capacity, upgradable to up to 2.5 Terabytes per second, and offers 99.9 percent uptime as well as long-distance voice, video and data communication services.

“Glo 1 will usher in a new era of prosperity for Ghanaians as its benefits will impact rapidly on the transformation of education, manufacturing, agriculture, health, entertainment and commerce, fuelling the national economy as a whole towards higher productivity and wealth,” said Mike Adenuga Jnr, Chairman of Globacom, at a launch event in April.

Kivilcim explained that the main problem for Internet users in Africa is that the majority of online content is developed in Europe or the US, and accessing this content over wireless technologies such as satellite is very expensive. By deploying fibre, people can access content quickly and easily, at a cheaper price point.

However, he also said that African countries need to recognise the opportunities that high-speed internet connectivity presents, and start developing their own content – particularly in areas like telemedicine, disaster management e-banking and e-learning.

“In Ghana, the government is making initiatives to improve e-education,” said Kivilcim. “So for instance we know that they made an agreement with a manufacturer to provide 60,000 laptops to schools. Definitely this is one of the areas that will benefit as connectivity becomes more affordable for end users.”

Tackling the price problem

A report by analyst firm Ovum last month found that high broadband prices in developing markets such as South Africa, Colombia, Nigeria, Malaysia, the Philippines, India and Pakistan are stifling local uptake, putting it out of reach for the majority of the population. It claimed that, in some countries, broadband pricing was double or triple the price of an equivalent service in a more developed market.

“Broadband continued to be beyond the reach of the vast majority of emerging market consumers,” the report stated. “This lack of affordability is a major inhibitor to unlocking the growth potential in these markets.”

However, Kivilcim believes that this could change with innovations like Alcatel’s lightRadio – a radio system in a tiny cube weighing 300g, which replaces all the electronics of a base station in a tiny low-power package. As well as reducing the energy consumption of the base stations, they also drastically reduce the cost.

“We believe that these kind of technologies will bring more economics to the business case of the operators, and that will be a direct reflection to the end user price,” said Kivilcim.