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SPACE SCIENCES

Opportunities for Africa
Adding 200Tbps of Capacity
According to GMSA, by the end of 2022,
495 million people will be subscribed to
mobile services in sub-Saharan Africa –
some 46% of the region’s population. As
of 2020, Statista reported that 620 million
people lived within 25km range of a fibre
optic network node. While successful
mobile and fibre network deployments
are a positive development, it is possible
that the audiences served by these two
technologies largely overlap, meaning
that any further growth will remain
subject to proven business case feasibility
in the case of less densely populated The powerful potential and inherent capabilities of the LEO, MEO and next
areas (typically both rural and remote). generation GEO satellite services can be expected to be leveraged by specialist service
It is expected that the New Space providers like Q-KON Africa, to build network solutions aimed at connecting Africa’s
satellite constellations will add a total remaining market segments.
of 200 Tbps capacity to the sub-Saharan
African market. To put this in context, the Smart network architectures
Seacom undersea cable was designed New Space services will also be harnessed in service of global industry trends such
for 12 Tbps and is currently provisioned as cloud computing and internet-of-things (IoT) development. This has already been
at 500 Gbps, so satellites have the demonstrated by the Microsoft Azure Orbital product and the Amazon Web Service
potential to add the equivalent of 16 Ground Station which are both intended to service, support and enable the large network
additional Seacom cables. Adding to this space constellations.
are the fundamental benefits of satellite These developments will be a follow-up to services such as Twoobii, the Smart
services, including the fact that they are Satellite Service engineered and operated by Q-KON Africa. Smart Satellite Services
immediately available, anywhere and support applications such as SD-WAN, video surveillance and IP layer 2-over-satellite
everywhere. This means that Africa could architecture are also expected to see significant growth.
soon experience a capacity burst in the These developments will facilitate the seamless integration of new satellite services
market, and all the advantages that will with existing terrestrial networks and enable the network expansion throughout Africa.
flow from that. The planned 400% increase in satellite launch activities over the next decade will
transform the global telecoms industry by adding 200 Tbps capacity to overall network
No-limit connectivity fabrics. While the majority of services and developments are focused on Government
The development of LEO constellations applications, Africa certainly stands to benefit from this expansion.
such as Starlink and OneWeb, and MEO The growth in available capacity, plus the flexibility and rapid deployment benefits
constellations such as SES mPower, of satellite, have the potential to drive an accelerated deployment of communication
will introduce a new range of satellite services to all. n
services to Africa and further exorcise
the old myths about slow, expensive
satellite services beset by latency issues.
For example, Starlink is promoting
service rates of 50 – 150 Mbps, with
latency of just 15-100 msec at monthly
charges of $100, which appear to be
more targeted towards professional
users rather than the general consumer
market. OneWeb is clearly more of a
B2B offering with latency of just 70 msec
and data rates of 300 Mbps. Completing
the current range of offerings, mPower
MEO service will provide very high
capacity 400 Mbps point-to-point links
at 150 msec latency, making a viable Twoobii is a high throughput satellite connectivity service
alternative to fibre connectivity. managed by Q-KON (credit Barbara van den berg)

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