I call mobile penetration in Africa, "Cheating Death".
Let's step back a bit: Telecoms -in the hands of the state- were going to die, or were barely alive in 80s to the early 90s. You had enough telephony for the rich, the police and the government and only in the urban areas.
There was a huge repressed demand, the waiting lists of people who could afford, a phone line and needed it. Governments did not have the money nor the political will to serve that demand.
Then the African countries woke up for what was happening in the rest of the world. Separating Post Office form Telecommunications and in the 890s came liberalization, Privatization and deregulation.
Then GSM hit. The R&D costs already amortized in the developed countries. Vendors were very fast in pursuing the sales to developing countries and quickly establish a footprint there. These vendors who were in cahoots with the state-owned enterprises running fixed line, had to quickly metamorphose into mobile vendors.
Some like Alcatel and Siemens were so much wedded to the old style state-owned fixed line enterprises that delayed entry. Ericsson, saw the writing on the wall and moved quickly. From cozy relationships with fixed line operators to be first starter in the mobile,
Nokia saw a way to dethrone the fixed line operators.
Let's go back to Africa. Mobile was an infrastructure developed for rich developed countries. It was seen in the early stages a rich man phone to be put in BMW Series 7 cars. Technologies developed so fast that people forget they came from.
To be able to be deployed in the developing countries, mobile operators had to cut corners. Here is no electric grid. There is the problem of security. Anything that is not bolted down to the foundation is carted away overnight.
Mobile sites needed generators running 24/7 and fleets of Diesel tankers supplying the engines. And an army of maintenance crews, repairing, changing oil, changing filters, changing starting batteries, and changing the Diesel engines and putting a new coupled with the generators.
That diversion from the business of marketing and selling needs to be given to specialized firms. Let a firm own the trouble and worry about security and Diesel engines while the operator run the mobile business. Voila! The tower company!
Someone who landed in Africa in 2005 would say: Wow! I can call my home in the US! This is good. Africans have cheated death. Telecoms were alive.
But you cant cheat death forever... |
