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Lower broadband prices
2011-11-21
New research from Frost & Sullivan covering SA, Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo, Lesotho, Nigeria and Uganda communications markets, finds that these nations had 181.7 million mobile and fixed telephony customers and 29.8 million Net customers in 2010 and guesstimates this to reach 266.1 million mobile and fixed customers and 77.5 million Net customers respectively in 2015. "The expansion of mobile voice and Web markets in Africa is anticipated to be driven basically by a reduction in retail price for these services," notes Frost & Sullivan's Info and Communication Technologies Industry researcher Vitalis G. Ozianyi. "Operators in the area are investing heavily in mobile framework, including base stations and transmission networks, with the purpose of making higher network capacity available at a lower cost." Operators are at the leading edge of prompting market expansion by passing savings in network costs to the end users of services. They're making an investment in shared earthly fibre optic substructure, to extend transmission capacities and connect end users to undersea wires. They also are adopting substructure sharing at base stations, to reduce the general value of delivering services to finish users. "Cost minimisation is probably going to translate into lower retail costs of voice and Web services," explains Ozianyi. "This will drive the demand and uptake of such services." The most notable challenge concerning expansion of voice and Web markets in Africa is the low discretionary earnings of a significant percentage of buyers. The price of devices needed for uptake of Web services is in general understood to be high. "Operators in Africa are probably going to experience challenges in penetrating a market that's principally controlled by buyers with lower living standards," explains Ozianyi. "This is probably going to limit the expansion of Web services markets in the short term." "African operators are probably going to analyse models made use of in developing markets in the area to aid broader uptake of mobile voice and Net services," recommends Ozianyi. "Growth of voice and Net markets is probably going to be supported by the provision of minimal cost smartphones.".
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