The African Internet has taken massive strides forward over the past three years, thanks to the large investments telecommunications operators have made in new terrestrial and submarine cables. However, there is still a lot of hard work to be done before Internet services are accessible and affordable to every person on the continent.

That’s according to Mark Simpson, CEO of SEACOM, reflecting on the state of Africa’s Internet ahead of World Telecommunications Day (17 May 2012). He says that the telecommunications industry has broken many of the bottlenecks to affordable and ubiquitous broadband across the continent.

New submarine cables such as SEACOM and the recently launched WACS have helped to boost the performance of the Internet in many African countries while driving costs down for the end user. SEACOM alone has seen more than 10-fold increases in bandwidth penetration in several of Africa’s most underserved nations, driven by drops in connectivity prices and increases in terrestrial coverage.

3G cellular network technologies have helped to boost connectivity speeds to the end user and new terrestrial networks have helped to extend connectivity from submarine cable landing points into African hinterland, once only covered by expensive satellites. Many challenges still remain, including extending the reach of the international cables into vast African territories that remain underserved, says Simpson.

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Today saw the commercial launch of the West African Cable System (WACS) along the coast of Africa. The cable, stretching over 14, 500km from Yzerfontein near Cape Town to London,  sees the addition of more than 40% to South Africa’s existing international broadband capacity and is expected to drive down bandwidth prices.

The launch also marks an important milestone for South African service providers, including Vodacom, who as an investor, welcomes the launch of the cable as part of its efforts in providing as much of its customer base as possible with access to the internet.

Vodacom states in an official press release that according to the Department of Communications, only around 2% of South Africans have access to fixed-line broadband, whereas 17% access broadband via smartphones.

Vodacom’s Chief Technology Officer, Andries Delport said that “It’s clear that mobile technology is the quickest and most practical route to spreading Internet access to all South Africans. With a high base of the population already covered, we only need to get two key things in place and SA can quite literally take a giant leap forward. The first part is obvious – cheaper smart devices that everyone can afford. The second part is to ensure that the mobile networks can support the data traffic.”

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Cheap computing power, paired with ubiquitous connectivity in nearly every corner of the world, is creating a global, intelligent fabric of network services and applications that will transform the way we live over the next three to five years.

That’s according to Stafford Masie, technology entrepreneur and Co-Founder of a content and cloud enabling company with SEACOM. He says that the Internet is rapidly evolving into a Sensory Membrane of Ubiquitous Real-time Federated Subsystems (Smurfs) that delivers rich services and applications that were the stuff of science-fiction just a decade ago.

“A range of technologies are maturing and meshing together into a rich network that already has immense capabilities. Just think about doing a Google search on your phone. The device does none of the processing, yet you have access to a wealth of information within a few seconds of starting the search,” says Masie.

Within the next 18 to 36 months, we can expect to see a range of machine to machine applications as well the growth of big data completely change users’ expectations of what the global network can do for them.

So what exactly is this “Smurf” village he is talking about?

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In about once month’s time a brand new under sea cable called the West African Sea Cable (Wacs) will officially be launched in South Africa. The cable, that measures 14, 000km in length will link Yzerfontein in the Western Cape to London in the UK along the entire West Coast of the African continent.

An official launch event for the new cable will take place next month at the landing site at Yzerfontein, north of Cape Town. The landing points of the cable along the coastline include countries such as Namibia, Angola, The Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Portugal.

Angus Hay, co-chair of the Wacs management committee and chief technology officer at Neotel, who has been commissioned to run the primary network operating centre in Johannesburg, has commented that the testing of the cable has progressed well and that once it has been launched at the site, commercial traffic is likely to become available shortly after. Currently, the cable is in the process of being accepted by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, the supplier.

Many South Africans will hope that the introduction of the new giant cable will result in the lowering of broadband pricing across the country and according to Hay, increase and “improve competition”.

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Broadband connectivity will be one of the major spurs to the growth of African economies over the next decade, but there is still plenty of work to be done in building the telecommunications backbone that will connect the continent to the global village. This is according to Aidan Baigrie, Head of Business Development at SEACOM, who was speaking at the Sixth Annual Africa Economic Forum. He says that broadband is to the 21st century what railways were to the last century – the engine of social and economic progress that forges economic links between countries and supercharges trade and transactions.

One World Bank study found a 1.3% increase in GDP for every 10% increase in broadband connectivity – an illustration of just how important connectivity is in Africa’s growth path. Though the relationship between GDP and broadband may not be one of simple direct causality, there is no doubt that access to information, communication and education helps countries to grow their economies at a rapid rate.

Baigrie says that new international cables such as SEACOM have helped to boost the performance of the Internet in many African countries while reducing costs for the end-user. In service since July 2009, SEACOM alone has seen more than 10-fold increases in bandwidth penetration in several of Africa’s most underserved nations, along with big drops in connectivity prices. Many African operators are also investing in national backhaul links and the last mile.

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Motillion today announced the global launch of Snapdisk (www.mysnapdisk.com), a secure cloud storage and file sharing service for PC, Mac, and mobile devices. Snapdisk was conceptualised by the South African technology startup and developed in conjunction with their strategic international partners.

Snapdisk offers its users a hassle-free solution to securely access, edit, synchronise and share all your digital files wherever you are, whenever you want. “External USB devices are a great way to quickly back up important data but it is no longer the most secure method to keep your data safe” says Shaun Adler, co-founder of Motillion.  “Theft and hardware damage is a real risk when you keep your data backed up at home or the office, a problem that is eliminated when storing your data securely online.”

Snapdisk was developed to make online back up and sync as easy as possible to use. Whether you want to run a digitally efficient business or simply keep your personal files safe and accessible, there is a package for you. “We wanted to develop a cloud storage service that is much easier to use than anything else currently available online and offer it at a much better price point” adds Adler.

With Snapdisk you can back up, sync and share your digital files from any internet-enabled device including your desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablet. Enjoy unlimited access to your work files, music, photos and videos. Add, edit or delete files from any of your devices and Snapdisk will automatically sync your files to the cloud. 100% safe. 100% secure. Always accessible.

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Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast by Region

According to the Cisco Visual Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016, South Africa, mobile data traffic will grow 49-fold from 2011 to 2016, resulting in a compound annual growth rate of 118%. The VNI study also projects that in South Africa, mobile data traffic will reach 102, 565 Terabytes (0.1 Exabytes) per month in 2016, the equivalent of 26 million DVDs each month or 283 million text messages each second.

South Africa Highlights: (more…)

Nashua Mobile has introduced a unique data package called “Xtreme Data” for select Nokia smartphones and mobile phones.

For R59.00 per month – on top of standard contract charges – professionals and consumers will be able to gain access to email, instant messaging, browsing and social networking on their smartphones and mobile phones. The predictable and fixed monthly cost removes the uncertainty associated with other data rate plans and eliminates the chance of ‘bill shock’.

Says Nashua Mobile MD, Chris Radley: “The cost of data usage has been one of the most significant barriers to wider use of smartphones for Web access and other online applications. With our new offering, we hope to make the mobile Web accessible and affordable to a wider range of smartphone users.”

The service is initially available for the Nokia X2-01 and Nokia C3 mobile phones based on the Series 40 platform, and the Nokia N8, Nokia E5 and Nokia E7 from Nokia’s smartphone range. It is expected that in the near future the service will be expanded to other smartphones based on the Symbian, Windows Phone, iOS and Android platforms, allowing a much wider group of people to enjoy affordable, predictable data costs no matter which smartphone platform they prefer.

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