3 ms·
The hundreds of billions of dollars made when mobile phone networks started operating across most of Africa could be repeated with internet services. However,
by maxklein 17y ago
The hundreds of billions of dollars made when mobile phone networks started operating across most of Africa could be repeated with internet services.
However, it is my understanding that internet at the moment across most of Africa is trending towards UMTS and another wireless technologies that leverage the existing towers built for mobile access.
A single such tower covers a far wider area and is much cheaper to install and maintain than broadband cables. Also, factoring in that Africa is not very densely populated, I would think that wireless makes sense over wired.
- jrgnsd 17y agoThis might be true for some areas in Africa, but there are areas such as Gauteng which are quite densely populated, and already have extensive copper and in some places fibre networks. The only problem is that access to these networks are still quite expensive.
- f3 17y agoThere are some areas in Gauteng where Telkom lines remain heavily rationed. Factor in the risk of copper theft and consequent reliability issues, and wireless is very attractive.
- daveungerer 17y agoThis change has nothing to do with wired vs. wireless. The reason South Africans can now have uncapped internet is because, previously, international bandwidth was very expensive. However, new cables connecting Africa with the rest of the world have been going live, and will continue to go live over the next few years. So basically, the "last mile" infrastructure, whether it's cables or wireless, was never the main limiting factor when it came to internet in Africa, but may become more important in future as demand increases.