Rolling out broadband using wireless technologies means that it is always economically justifiable, says Daniel Aghion, executive director of The Wireless Internet Institute (W2I).
"Internet services can be economically viable in even the poorest environments with shared access models," he said in his presentation yesterday, on the first day of the African WiFi Summit being held in Cape Town.
Aghion said broadband can provide social and economic development opportunities in all environments.
He noted: "Successful solutions are always driven by well identified local application needs. Communities are the driving force in most cases, fostering demand aggregation to support services."
Case studies presented by Aghion included those from India, the US, Africa and Afghanistan, where such services have stimulated economic development. The use by the local population was heavy enough to make the roll out of wireless broadband economically viable.
"In Malawi, one of the world`s poorest countries, the WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) Africa Online is getting a 15% return on investment. In India, the shared rural kiosks are breaking even on as little as $3 (R20) per day," he said.
Aghion believes that local government, particularly municipalities, are increasingly taking the lead in rolling out wireless broadband to their communities.
Coincidently, after he said this, Cape Town-based WISP UniNet announced that it had secured a contract to make Knysna the first African wireless connected town.
Aghion also pointed to several obstacles impeding the rollout of wireless broadband in developing, particularly African, countries.
These obstacles included the cost of international Internet connectivity that often accounted for between 40% and 50% of a WISP`s direct costs. Then there is the reluctance by incumbent telcos to allow the deployment of Voice over Internet Protocol services for fear that they will "cannibalise" their traditional voice offerings.
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