{"id":19359,"date":"2011-03-31T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:57:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-03-31T14:57:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:57:00","slug":"build-it-and-they-will-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/19359-build-it-and-they-will-come.html","title":{"rendered":"Build it and they will come"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former iBurst MD Alan Knott-Craig Junior<\/a> told delegates at the recent sixth annual IIR Broadband Summit that telecoms and broadband network investment in Sub-Saharan Africa is not merely needed, but is a massive investment opportunity.<\/p>\n

According to Knott-Craig the insatiable demand for communications services and broadband access in Africa essentially means that a ‘build it and they will come’ business model is sustainable in the long term, and predicted that 3G will be “everywhere in Africa in five years’ time.”<\/p>\n

The affordability of 3G services in Africa remains low, but Knott-Craig predicts that this problem will also be solved. “In five years’ time 3G costs in Africa will be below 10c per MB – or maybe even as low as 1c per MB,” said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n

There are however financial difficulties in making money from data only. Knott-Craig explained that broadband services are used to ‘hook’ customers which are then enticed to also use voice and other services which creates more revenue and profits.<\/p>\n

\"AlanKnott-Craig said that they selected the wrong technology (iBurst) when he was leading iBurst South Africa, and urged companies to use 3G\/HSPA and later on LTE to avoid suffering the same fate as iBurst.<\/p>\n

While wireless technologies will be used to provide mobile broadband access to most Africans, Knott-Craig said that fixed line DSL access remains important. “DSL is still the best way to get into the Internet,” said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n

The former iBurst SA MD and World of Avatar founder concluded by saying that whoever invests in an extensive Sub-Saharan African broadband network now will most likely become the most powerful person on the continent.<\/p>\n

Build it and they will come<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Knott-Craig Junior says that network investment is needed in Africa, and that there is a great deal of money to be made<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}