Subsahara-Africa
The lack of fiber optic lines gives Satellite a strong position in the Telecommunication Market.
Poor terrestrial infrastructure costs Africa billions of Dollars, Satellite is the strongest and in most cases the only medium to provide Internet for Africa. Only four to five percent of the African population has access to the Internet, the majority of which lives in Northern Africa or in the Republic of South Africa. Due to lack of infrastructure the price for high-speed Internet is dramatically high. The plan with a fiber optic cable that was set up 2002 was to fill the gap and to provide faster and cheaper access to the Internet. But the expected positive changes have little to feel, even today. Monopoly situation and mismanagement in most African Countries have blocked noticeable improvements.
Plans to relocate another fiber optic cable in east Africa are asleep. Because of the problematic cable is the bulk of Internet connectivity via satellite. The lack of internet access is a serious problem for the economic development of Africa and can be solved only by implementation of fast Internet Satellite routes via Satellite. GSM Backhaul and larger ISP-Backbone routes are very bandwidth hungry.
In addition, individual connections base on very small VSAT terminals (such as iDirect, Link Star) are very popular in Africa. Hotels in the Serengeti, farms in Central Africa or Internet cafés in Nigeria all using satellite internet today, they only possibility to be connected with the world wide web. Therefore, the demand for satellite capacity over Africa and has increased constantly and has reached its peek 2008.
This is the reason why seek4sat.com has collected together the major players in the segment Satellite Internet to provide an economic transparency for the Satellite market in Africa.
