ITU official praises African countries for innovation

By Guy Berger

Highway Africa News Agency

CAIRO: South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria were singled out for praise in
promoting telecommunications development by an official of the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), during the African Telecoms 2004 conference
yesterday.

The remarks were made by Michael Minges, head of the Market, Economics and
Finance Unit at the ITU. The ITU is the convenor of the conference.

He argued that barriers to further growth in mobile telephony were less a
question of income, than of the geography of signal coverage. South Africa,
he said, should be commended for providing 97% of its population with
coverage. “South Africa now has better coverage for mobile than for
terrestrial TV.”

The country was also noted for having led the way in subsidizing growth
through exchanging the 1800 frequency, sought after by cellular operators,
for four million free sim cards to be given to poor people. “This will
dramatically expand the South African market,” he said.

Minges hailed Uganda for its experiment in adapting India’s Grameen
financing experience. “Many villages in Uganda can receive cellphone
signals, but residents can’t afford the service.” MTN had a system that put
them in touch with micro-finance possibilities, which along with
solar-powered or battery-charged phones, allowed individuals to acquire a
phone and start a business selling access.

Nigeria also received a mention for having encouraged fixed wireless
technologies, which had now grown to serving a quarter of the market for
high-speed internet access.

Minges said there was still room for lower prices and for more operators in
Africa. “If you have two players, why not three? The countries with
competition are growing much faster than those without.”

Assessing the prospects for mobile access to Internet, he said that the
current “second generation” GSM allowed people to use SMS as a substitute
for e-mail.

There was a “2.5 generation” service such as GPRS operating in Egypt and
South Africa, but most other countries had not yet “switched this on”. One
reason was because it was becoming almost as cheap to go to “third
generation” such as CDMA 2000.

The first “third generation” service in Africa seemed likely to be licensed
in Angola.

==========================