Nairobi, Kenya – African satellite technologies firm, Afsat, is seeking regulatory approval from a number of African countries to be allowed to provide high-speed internet services to retail customers and home users in an effort to bridge the digital divide. Afsat Managing Director Dawood Shah said Tuesday the telecommunication growth witnessed in Africa over the past 10 years and the consistent efforts to ease the regulatory environment in the communication industry was responsible for its quick growth.
Afsat is currently rated the continent’s largest provider of satellite telecommunication.
The firm’s managers say it is investing US$ 18 million annually across its continental network, covering Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania in order to provide services.
Shah said the firm had been trying to obtain a licence from the Kenyan regulators to enable it to offer direct internet services to millions of home users.
“We have been in discussions with the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) on the possibility of providing our services to end users,” Shah told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting of African satellite communication providers here.
The firm, founded by Kenyan professionals to help ease the telecommunication shortfalls in East Africa in the early 1990s, is also seeking to be involved in efforts to create digital villages in Kenya and across Africa, saying the continent still lacked enough bandwidth.
“No one thought telecommunication would pick up in Africa, the profit that the mobile phone companies are making in Africa was not anticipated, that is why note nough bandwidth was available in Africa,” Shah said.
He said most African countries where the company operated had consistently de-regulated the telecommunication industry, allowing it more space to operate.
“You need a licence to operate. The biggest setback for us at the start was to convince regulators to give us a licence,” Shah lamented. He said, however, the situation had changed.
Africa has been rated the fastest expanding source of new telecommunication growth after years of under-development.
The rate at which new products are being accepted and adopted in Africa far much surpasses the rest of the world.
Africa is rated as the world’s leading destination for new investments, a phenomenon which has seen more multinational firms rushing in to capture a slice of the market.
Afsat, one of the few private initiatives developed over the last 12 years to capture the new market, now boasts of a successful investment, with its satellite t echnologies now used in at least 41 countries across Africa, from its base in Kenya.
“We like to treat ourselves as a Kenyan company even though our majority shareholder is now M-Web, a division of Multi-Choice of South Africa,” said Job Ndege, the Afsat General Manager.
Pana
