Telcos aim to make Africa's remote areas attractive

India and China have emerged as major technology partners as African telecom companies explore technology that favors rural areas and generates profit at the same time.

Regulators have pressured telcos to lower tariffs and move into rural areas that have no power, sparse population and low Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

"In China and India, you find equipment vendors that have experience working in low income areas and can provide software solutions that benefit rural communities," said Themba khumalo, CEO of MTN Uganda.

Chinese equipment vendors and back-end solutions providers such as ZTE and Huaweii have become entrenched in Africa while Indian mobile companies Bharti Airtel and Essar have entered African markets, riding on their experience operating in low-ARPU areas.

"MTN has leveraged on services provided by Indian and Chinese companies to train local techies on how to provide such solutions; the skills transfer has been very beneficial," added Khumalo. Khumalo, along with other telecom and manufacturing officials, spoke at a technology conference in Nairobi this week.

"Its not only about corporate social responsibility, there is a business case for operators to move beyond urban areas; there is a lot of money flowing from urban to rural and when you evaluate, the needs for rural and urban communicators are not that different," added Khumalo.

The need to operate effectively in rural areas with minimal capital expenditure and zero operational expenditure has led the GSM Association to pursue applications using solar energy but most operators like MTN use solar and battery hybrid solutions in remote areas.

India has been instrumental in developing mobile solutions for rural areas and Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) has developed a solar solution that uses a 150 watts per base station and other smaller solutions that use 50 watts.

"Most operators have to deal with operational expenditure and fuel challenges because most generator-run base stations are not sustainable," in a rural environment, said Suraj Chaudhry head of business development at VNL.

The solar base station by VNL takes into consideration the challenges of conventional base stations and has provided technology in a small box that includes integrated transmission.

"The site can be set up in three hours, it uses pictures instead of manuals for set up because it envisages that the telco will not send engineers to the rural areas but use existing labor in the area, that may not be able to read the manuals," added Chaudhry.

The company is partnering with African telcos to test the service in African villages and expects to roll out the service once the pilot is done.

The increase in partnerships and mergers between Asian and African operators has shifted the focus from urban areas with high spending power to rural areas.

"Very soon we are going to see banks partnering with mobile phone companies to provide mobile money services and open accounts in remote areas," said Bernard Wahome, CEO, Broadcom Kenya.

The conference also explored ways that operators can share infrastructure in remote areas especially in areas with no legislation on infrastructure sharing and ways that operators can take advantage of fiber optic cable to increase internet penetration, moving from reliance on voice.