The carrier model – changing to sharing

The market opportunity in Africa is massive. We’ve seen mobile operators in particular, making huge investments in Africa.

France Telecom launched in Kenya in 2008 – its first foray into Anglophone Africa - and has acquired HITS Telecom in Uganda. Vodafone acquired Ghana Telecom in late 2008, while Zain launched its first 3.5G network on the continent outside of South Africa in Ghana.

Put together all of the costs in launching a new cellular network – from marketing and customer acquisition, to sales and engineering services, to retail outlets, offices etc. And that’s without the actual network build-out. But carriers can provide the same services, with the same speed and delivery quality, on a shared network.

We’re seeing carriers work together here, much as in the Middle East, where Zain announced a network sharing agreement with Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) in November 2007. MTN and South Africa’s Neotel in January signed a partnership agreement to co-operatively build a national long-distance fibre-optic network. This will be the first time network operators in South Africa will work together to lay fibre.

We are the carriers’ carrier and can provide operators with the infrastructure they need using existing networks – rather than build out their own from scratch at huge expense.

Innovation will need to come from carriers to develop a competitive advantage. And working together will be one way of making that happen. Government regulation and policy plays a part, and will have an impact, but I believe the biggest shift will come from the carriers themselves, responding to market demand.