China-Africa: MTN has sent a team of engineers to China to assess cellphone handsets that can retail for about $10
Lesley Stones
Johannesburg
MTN has sent a team of engineers to China to assess cellphone handsets that can retail for about $10, which it believes is crucial if cellular services are to spread throughout Africa.
Cellphone penetration was highly dependent on cheaper equipment as well as cheaper call fees, and the reliability of the Chinese handsets was no different from the more expensive brand name models, MTN regional vice-president Tim Lowry told the AfricaCom conference in Cape Town this week.
“In markets such as Uganda and Zambia we are able to sell five to six thousand of these phones per week,” he said.
Lowry also wants to source flashier multimedia handsets for about $40 each, and said the first manufacturer to achieve that target would be the winner in Africa.
Telecoms research house Informa predicts that 485-million Africans will be cellphone subscribers by 2013, yet that will still be a penetration rate of only about 38%. Today, many countries have a penetration rate of only about 18%.
Informa’s prediction may prove too modest if operators can slash the cost of their services, the speakers at AfricaCom believe.
Technology developer Qualcomm is using its office in Johannesburg to serve an increasing number of countries in Africa and agrees that low prices are essential for spreading communications across the continent. Qualcomm’s wireless technologies transmit high-speed data and video traffic, and demand for those services is finally beginning to grow, despite about 70% of Africans still not having access to basic voice calls.
Vice-president Jing Wang said there were tremendous growth opportunities in Africa because of the dearth of fixed-line telephony, and because wireless systems were far cheaper to deploy. “We are treating Africa as a high priority.”
Qualcomm licenses its technologies for network infrastructure and handset chip sets to equipment manufacturers such as Ericsson and Alcatel, which sell to operators including MTN, Vodacom and Neotel.
James Munn, vice-president of business development for southern Africa, is now targeting Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania and also plans to tackle Ethiopia, where only 9-million of its 90-million population have access to cellular services.
Wang said: “We are going to become a more active player in this continent and add resources in the region to work more with the regulators and operators to enable them to provide consumers with better services that are better quality and more affordable.”
He said it was not unrealistic to want to take high-speed data services to rural areas not yet enjoying voice coverage, since the two went hand in hand if the right technologies were used.
“Wireless broadband connectivity is very important for Africa and it’s the most economical and quickest way to bridge the gap,” Wang said.
“We need to work with the vendors to reduce the costs of the infrastructure and handsets so consumers in developing markets can afford these devices and services.”
Michael Joseph, CEO of Kenya’s Safaricom, said: “African operators have to be more innovative and look at data as a way to pump up their revenues.
“We also need to decrease costs, and sharing our infrastructure is one way we will probably all go in the end.”
(allafrica)