DiData takes on Africa

Dimension Data predicts Africa will turn towards mobility in a telecommunications environment where broadband infrastructure is lacking.

Andile Ngcaba, chairman of DiData Middle East and Africa, said this week at the company's Perspectives conference, held at Sun City, that Africa has seen tremendous growth in basic telecommunications, but broadband infrastructure is still lagging. “Africa has less than 1% of broadband penetration, even though Africa's broadband numbers have increased from 1.2 million, in 2005, to 4.4 million, at the end of 2007.”

According to Ngcaba, the key drivers of telecoms growth in the Middle East and Africa are available resources, an increase in service providers, the oil and gas, energy, and financial services sectors, and the public sector. Deregulation of the telecoms industry is also seen as a significant driver.

DiData operates in SA, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana, and has plans to expand its services on the continent.

Ngcaba says the development of true broadband services is constrained by the lack of cost-effective national and international backhaul infrastructure.

He predicts the future lies in wireless technologies and there will be an increase in converged services and a shift from voice as a primary revenue source into data and content services.

This will be due to the deployment of submarine cable systems, by operators such as Seacom, in June, which is expected to result in lower cost international broadband access to the continent. In addition, Africa will see an increase in high-speed wireless technologies such as 3G mobile and WiMax.

DiData found Angola is the fastest growing economy in Africa, because of its oil supply. The company expanded its services there by recently acquiring a 51% stake in Sistemas Redes e Communicac~oes, an Angolan-based IT solutions company.

“Clearly, there are a lot of opportunities on the African continent. Dimension Data is monitoring and seeing the extent to which the global slowdown will impact Africa,” says Ngcaba.

DiData is in discussions with Vodafone to develop cloud technologies for mobile devices. Ngcaba says: “In addition, we have bought an IP-based platform for MTN Nigeria to provide services to a number of their business customers and consumers to integrate both voice and data and value-added services to their platform.

“Another project we recently did was with the SA Department of Foreign Affairs. Dimension Data connected all their embassies around the world and within those embassies we built LANs so that they can communicate seamlessly.”

Africa is ahead of India and Asia Pacific in terms of the rate of mobile growth; however, this is putting pressure on the supply of backhaul capacity because of an increased adoption of mobile services.

Ngcaba says Africa has 360 million telephone subscribers in total, of which 339 million are mobile cellular subscribers. “Africa has 14% of the world's population, but it only has 7% of all fixed and mobile subscribers and an Internet penetration of just 5%.”

According to him, 3G mobile and WiMax are some of the wireless technologies that are expected to make broadband more prevalent in Africa. He claims broadband pricing in Africa is lower in countries that have deployed both fixed and wireless broadband technology.

Ngcaba says 3G and wireless broadband providers are slowly developing their markets, so the potential demand for wireless is huge. The 2010 Soccer World Cup is another key driver that will influence IT spend on infrastructure.