Africa Broadband Adoption Low, but Poised for Big Change

While just 16 percent of the continent’s one billion people are online, that picture is changing rapidly.

While Internet penetration is just over 16 percent across the continent as a whole, it is much higher in urban areas, where more than 50 percent of residents use the Internet regularly.

A recent McKinsey report found that 25 percent of urban Africans go online daily, led by Kenyans at 47 percent and Senegalese at 34 percent, according to McKinsey.

Still, levels of broadband service remain relatively low. Overall broadband penetration, on a per-capita basis, is about 2.5 percent in Algeria, and 0.1 percent in Angola, for example. Per-capita measures understate fixed network broadband penetration, however, to the extent that a connection is to households with multiple residents.

If typical household membership is five, all the per-capita measures need to be multiplied by five, to derive penetration of households, which is the more meaningful metric, some would say.

Country	Per-Capita Broadband Penetration	Per-Capita Mobile Penetration
Algeria	2.5	103
Angola	0.1	49
Cameroon	0	64
Cote d’Ivoire	0	96
Egypt	1.8	115
Ethiopia	0.8	24
Ghana	0.2	100
Kenya	0	72
Morocco	1.6	120
Mozambique	0.1	33
Nigeria	0.1	68
Senegal	0.6	88
South Africa	1.5	135
Tanzania	0	57

Will FCC Formally Modify its Historic Cable TV Industry Market Share Rules?

Something potentially more interesting than smaller Charter Communications buying Time Warner Cable are afoot. 

The wild card at the moment is that Comcast might consider buying Time Warner Cable, a move that Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable company, would have avoided a decade ago, to avoid running afoul of Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice anti-trust scrutiny and oppostion.

Though some would note that the rules were informally modified in a key way some time ago, the U.S. cable industry basically continues to operate under FCC rules that no single cable company can serve more than about 30 percent of U.S. subscribers. Some confusion exists, though.

In 1999, the FCC, in a unanimous vote, redefined the concentration rules and relevant markets to allow AT&T to buy Mediacom, theoretically allowing AT&T to serve potentially 40 percent of U.S. homes. But that is a slightly different issue. 

AT&T represented new telco industry competition, and was not a legacy cable operator.

The FCC cable market share rule remains in effect, formally, but the thinking was that AT&T would be able to offer competition to the incumbent cable TV companies.

Given the many changes in the video market over the last decade, might the FCC be willing to take a different look at concentration? 

The FCC once barred a merger by DirecTV and Dish Network, as that would result in one U.S. satellite provider. But in markets that structurally are different now, does it make sense to regulate industry by industry, or look at the whole market.

Even the definition of the "market" might be enlarged to include over the top providers such as Netflix, as well.

Although the old 30 percent cap was technically not changed, the revisions to the definitions of markets and cable ownership effectively raised the ownership cap for cable television to the rough equivalent of 36 percent and even more for video service, albeit only when it was a telco that could gain that much share (AT&T has not done so yet).

In other words, regulators were willing to look at competition and concentration not simply in terms of "industry silos," but service by service. 

So the interesting new challenge is, what if Comcast does make a bid to buy Time Warner Cable, pushing Comcast into a range that exceeds the traditional FCC market share rules?

Will Comcast be allowed to do so, and if so, will it be because its video market share is shrinking, while its voice and high-speed Internet access share is growing? At the time, the FCC thinking about competition and market share was that it makes a difference whether the market share being considered is cable in video services, or telcos in voice, not just inter-industry or intra-industry concentration measures. 

Though it would be notable if Charter bought Time Warner Cable, the bigger policy ramifications would come if Comcast were to try and buy Time Warner Cable. 

APT 700 Creates World Band for LTE

The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) band plan for 700 MHz spectrum harmonized globally is viewed by many as important for Long Term Evolution, as it creates a worldwide band of spectrum capable of supporting LTE in most countries, and also therefore allows suppliers of network gear and handsets to build more affordably and efficiently.

It therefore is not surprising APT 700 got at least some attention at the recent International Telecommunications Union Telecom World.

“This is the first time that a technology in one band is available almost globally,” said

Margit Brandl, Nokia Siemens Networks Global Head of Telecoms Policy.

But APT 700 also reflects a couple of other important reasons, including the issues of repurposing, refarming and sharing spectrum in new ways. As the APT 700 plan is based on repurposing former TV broadcast spectrum, APT 700 is akin to the TV white spaces effort, which likewise finds new communications applications for unused TV broadcasting spectrum.

In some cases, perhaps, the APT 700 spectrum could allow new or weaker competitors to obtain valuable ways to extend coverage to rural areas more affordably. In many markets, the carriers that now are the incumbents mostly were able to acquire frequencies that propagate significantly better than the later 2 GHz blocks upon which many competitors have based their businesses.

In Europe, SFR has already started refarming of the 1800 MHz band, according to SFR CFO Thomas Welter. Telstra likewise is an advocate of spectrum refarming, said Mike Wright, Telstra executive director.

The APT 700 MHz band offers the opportunity for European bands to overlap with Asian and South American bands, tapping into a potential pool of in excess of two billion people.

LTE in Unlicensed Spectrum?

Qualcomm wants to enable use of Long Term Evolutiion in unlicensed radio spectrum used for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. That this can be done, in terms of technology, is probably not the biggest issue. 

The biggest issue is that virtually all blocks of allocated spectrum specify what purposes, and what air interfaces, can be used in those bands. 

Such multiple air interfaces approaches will necessarily require regulatory action.

To be sure, many have argued that innovation is promoted when regulators do not issue licenses with specific air interfaces or specific applications intended for use of that spectrum. How much chance Qualcomm might have in getting such regulations changed is the issue.

"Europe Falling Behind" is Temporary, as was "U.S. is Falling Behind"

Far too much is made of “leadership” in communications. For what seems like a decade, observers “worried” that U.S. consumers lagged Europeans, the Japanese or the South Koreans in use of mobile phones or text messaging. One might simply note that the gaps closed, arguably once service providers got serious about making mobile services a mass  market product, and once consumers grew to understand the value.

Similarly, some observers decried, or sometimes continue to decry, lagging U.S. Internet access speeds, prices or both. Ignore for the moment conflicting evidence about whether that remains the case, or to what extent there are differences.

Still, European observers now worry that “Europe is falling behind” in next generation fixed broadband or mobile Long Term Evolution.

European service providers lead the deployment of a succession of technologies, from GSM to early deployments of LTE in the nordic countries, for example. And then there was the leadership of firms such as Nokia. Nokia’s fall is part of the present worry.

With the advent of the smart phone era, innovation and perceptions have changed. the success of Apple and Android's devices, operating systems and apps moved the center of innovation to the United States, while Asian companies are more relevant than ever, according to Analysys Mason.

As once too much attention was paid to European leadership and U.S. “gaps,” now too much is made of U.S. leadership and European lagging.

It might be reasonable to say that since U.S. firms tend to lead with software, a shift to a software-driven mobile Internet would potentially shift fortunes. One might also argue regulatory regimes in North American and Europe have had direct impact on both the level of competition and investment.

LTE connections as a percentage of mobile connections, selected regions, 2010–2017 [Analysys Mason, 2013]

One might also note that European operators adopted faster versions of 3G networks at level that matched customer demand for speed, resulting in less need to upgrade to 4G.

The point is that investment, consumer demand, software and hardware supply will shift, from time to time. Over time, adoption, supply and impact tends to equalize, from one developed region to the next.

Also, at some point, the issue is what value a given nation or region can wring out of its investments, not the mere fact that investment in faster networks has been made. That always will be tough to measure.

Though the hand wringing about Europe “falling behind” is real, it has to be kept in perspective. Many would have noted U.S. “lags” in broadband and mobile adoption as well. Sustainable “advantage” seems to be as elusive in communications technology as it is in the life of firms.

Google Builds First "Middle Mile" Network

Google has for some time operated one of the world’s biggest global long haul networks. Google also operates access networks in several U.S. cities. Now Google also provides a regional fiber backbone network that apparently can be used by access providers in Kampala, Uganda.

Google’s Project Link is a regional fiber network that apparently will sell capacity to any local mobile operator or Internet service provider operating in and around Kampala.

Project Link’s network is one more way Google has built its own infrastructure, including a global long haul network, local access in three U.S. cities and now a regional backbone network in Kampala. Of those networks, the Kampala network is the first of the “middle mile” type, and also the first intended to sell capacity to third party access providers.

Is Privacy an Anomaly on Social Networks?

Google's chief internet evangelist, Vint Cerf, suggests that privacy--at least in the context of social networks--might be an anomaly. 

That is not a blanket statement about government data collection or privacy in some other contexts, only a recognition that the whole point of social networks is sharing. 

As was true for most people in prior historical periods where most people lived in small villages, and where "everybody knew everything" about other people in the community, something of that same process affects online social networks as well.