Current broadband alternatives in Africa
Currently, broadband in Africa is years behind European or US standards.
For instance, the competitive landscape in Kinshasa for the residential as well as the corporate market is predominantly delivering “broadband” services via the mobile network and point to point connections, both bearing inherent limitations. Even high-end residential or business districts do not have physical cable access for true broadband. As a result, pricing is high and performance not on par with western standards.
Costs for sim-card-based Wi-Fi hotspots hover around $100 for 100 GB and for dedicated point to point connectivity, suppliers are asking between $200 and $800 per Mbps.
Satellite based TV ranges from $7 to $105 per month and doesn’t work while it’s raining.
IP telephony, important to enterprises and large corporations is absent.
Broadband Data
The big market participants: Africell, Airtel, Vodacom, Orange etc. are predominantly focused on the mobile phone sectors. However, given the lack of cable infrastructure and therefore the lack of fixed broadband in Africa, these players have started to merge into the ISP space via Wi-Fi hot spot dongles for residential customers and point to point solutions for enterprise solutions. As neither of these solutions provides fixed broadband services on par with western standards, these services are priced high and are limited in functionality and capacity.
TV
The two main providers are DSv and Canal+, which both operate on the satellite technology with its biggest disadvantage being signal disturbance from weather (rain). Both offer various channel offerings with prices ranging from $7 per month to $105 per month.
Fixed phone lines
Provided by some market participants for additional fee. These are not used often due the absence of IP phone functionality and inability to provide PBX systems which are critical for enterprise offerings and large corporations.
Competitive pricing overview
| Data Providers | Plan | Speed | Monthly Cost USD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sim-card based Providers | ||||
| Vodacom | Limited: 30GB | LTE | 75.00 $ | Only 1/5th data of avg. K3 customer uses |
| Vodacom | Limited: 100GB | LTE | 100.00 $ | Less data than avg the K3 consumer uses |
| Satellite Offers | ||||
| Afrikanet Data | Limited: 100GB | 20Mbps | 300.00 $ | Has high latency, 10 seconds to open webpage |
| Afrikanet Data | Limited: 200GB | 20Mbps | 600.00 $ | Has high latency, 10 seconds to open webpage |
| Afrikanet Data + VoIP | Limited: 100GB | 20Mbps | 400.00 $ | Has high latency, 10 seconds to open webpage |
| Afrikanet Data + VoIP | Limited: 200GB | 20Mbps | 800.00 $ | Has high latency, 10 seconds to open webpage |
| Dedicated Offers | ||||
| Global Broadband Solution | Dedicated | 1Mbps | 700.00 $ | (plus installation cost $1,500 - $5,000) |
| Global Broadband Solution | Dedicated | 3Mbps | 2,100.00 $ | (plus installation cost $1,500 - $5,000) |
| Global Broadband Solution | Dedicated | 5Mbps | 3,500.00 $ | (plus installation cost $1,500 - $5,000) |
| Orion-RDC | Dedicated | 1Mbps | 320.00 $ | Orion-RDC Dedicated 3Mbps 960.00 $ |
| Orion-RDC | Dedicated | 5Mbps | 1,600.00 $ | |
| Orion-RDC | Dedicated | 3Mbps | 960.00 $ | |
| Airtel | Dedicated | 5Mbps | 5,104.00 $ |
Table 1 Africa broadband competitive pricing overview
Given our hands-on data, the average K3 customer in Sierra Leone uses 140 GB data per month, thus Vodacom’s largest package of 100 GB is not enough for regular broadband use. Additionally, above packages do not include TV and IP telephony. These are priced additionally if available at DStv or Canal+ from $7 to $105.
This situation represents all major cities in Africa.
Together with K3 we will set up an infrastructure that will allow up to 1,000 Mbps per user of dedicated bandwidth, over 150 Digital TV channels and IP telephony to residential, governmental, and business clients with prices expecting to range around 50% below competition.
There is no service even remotely comparable to K3 “Cable in the Air”.