Amadou Makhtar Fall is a Telecoms and Broadcast regulatory
affairs specialist with more than ten years’ experience in a major telco in
Africa: he is the founder of publication ITMag and is head of Legal and Regulatory Monitoring at Orange-owned Sonatel, Senegal’s leading mobile
operator. He is a regular participant at Connecting West Africa and will
moderate this year’s keynote session.
We ask Amadou his thoughts on the main trends in the development of broadband networks
in West Africa: “The relatively low
penetration of xDSL in this area of the continent has somehow called for
the development of high speed mobile networks” he says. “The future of broadband in West Africa will inevitably
be based on 3G and 4G/LTE networks by taking advantage of the democratization of fixed 3G-4G-LTE / WiFi Set-top Boxes”.
This year may see a gear change in the
broadband market, particularly in Senegal : “The appointed date of June
2015 for the transition from analog to digital TV
as well as the possible allocation of 4G/LTE licenses
can actually make 2015 a special year for the development of digital
Senegal.”
Digital transition will potentially have a strong impact on West Africa’s telecoms and media sector.
Telecom operators can potentially be more involved in
content distribution and perhaps more importantly have strong expectations
regarding “the allocation of ‘golden’
frequencies released through the transition, also called digital dividend”. On the media side, the digital transition
will, according to Amadou, “completely mess
up broadcasters’ business models. Some investments on
satellite can be quickly outdated
as they are incompatible with the distribution of DTT channels. That
is why all broadcasters must be actively involved with the authorities in charge of the deployment
of DTT.”
LTE will unquestionably play a major part of broadband
development in the region. Several LTE launches have taken place and many
operators are in testing phases, but licensing conditions and spectrum
allocations are major questions: "several
grey areas persist on the conditions of allocation of these
scarce resources: will auctions be
organized or will they be beauty contests?
Will 2G/3G frequency
re-farming be allowed? All this remains to be determined by the regulatory authorities” says Amadou.
“It would be very deplorable if 4G/LTE license
allocations were to be done in a ‘dispersed’
way in some countries
in the region, without any call for applications”.
The impact of regulation on access to affordable broadband cannot be
underestimated and telecom operators need “improved regulatory visibility on the short/medium term” says Amadou; “As broadband
is more and more
about wireless infrastructure, which is very intensive in
spectrum resources, an improvement on the
cost of acquisition of these frequencies could allow operators to make access to broadband more affordable. The redistribution of spectrum resources
from the digital dividend is also a big opportunity to boost mobile broadband”.
See the topics Amadou is most interested in at Connecting WestAfrica 2015 and where to find them in the programme:
• Infrastructure
sharing : hear
from Wilgon Tsibo, Group CTO of Azure Telecom on the various models, and join
the subsequent roundtable debate
• Challenges and obstacles
to the development of mobile broadband : follow the keynote sessions on broadband
investment, regulation and LTE
• Mobile banking: check out the debate on monetising data in
broadband and join the ‘idea generator’ interactive session on service
innovation
• The transition to
digital TV => digital dividend: check out the
debate on Senegal’s market
