GOOGLE, 03B embark on advanced satelite network connection for Africa

03b Networks, a satelite network company that is baked by Google, has set its sights on increasing network coverage in the African continent, where most people are still not logged on.

The company, which went prime time in September, has announced that it aims to use satellites to provide low-cost Internet access to Africa and other emerging markets.

Africa’s interior, and other regions, are short on communications infrastructure and analysts say that the market therefore, remains untapped and available.

“When you look at the Internet in many of those markets, there’s not much going on there,” said Claude Rousseau, an analyst with Northern Sky Research.

Rousseau, who estimates that only five per cent of the African population is online, says that there is pent-up demand in Africa, adds that a project such as O3b’s, which covers the whole continent right off the bat, makes “a whole lot of business sense.”

O3b, based in the U.K.’s Channel Islands, expects to have its first satellites up and running by late 2010, the year that Africa will host its first ever soccer World Cup, in South Africa.

Satellite service already is available in Africa and elsewhere, but O3b’s will be much cheaper.

It will use relatively inexpensive, medium-earth orbit satellites that offer low latency, which is the time it takes for a signal to travel between earth and a satellite. The company will sell its backhaul capacity to Internet service providers, which will deal directly with Web users.

The company’s CEO and founder, Greg Wyler, already knows a bit of the African market, having previously ran Terracom, an Internet service provider based in Rwanda, and owned Rwandatel, a national phone company.

Before Rwanda, he founded Silent Systems, a Massachusetts-based provider of sound damping and cooling technologies for PCs that he sold in 1998 for $15 million (R150m) while still in his late 20s.

With O3b, Wyler has attracted some big-name support. Web search king Google, cable giant Liberty Global LBTYA and the private equity arm of British bank HSBC HBC in September announced that they would invest about $65 million (R650m) in the venture.

O3b expects to spend about $500 million (R5 billion) on its initial eight satellites, but critics have questioned whether it will be able to raise such funding, against the current world economic crunch.
O3b’s initial network of eight satellites is expected to grow to 16, hitting a total cost of $650 million (R6.5bn) to $750 million (R7.5bn).

BY ITnewsAfrica.com