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November 19, 2024

Shaping Africa’s Digital Future: Insights from the 2024 WBBA Broadband Development Conference

Screenshot 2024-11-19 122801
The WBBA, a Geneva-based global nonprofit organization, plays a pivotal role in fostering cooperation among broadband operators, manufacturers, policymakers, and investors.

On November 12, 2024, the World Broadband Association (WBBA) Broadband Development Conference (BDC) took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Centered on the theme "Africa's Cloud-Network Broadband Development and Digital Transformation," the event gathered global experts, scholars, and industry leaders to explore how cloud-network broadband can revolutionize Africa's digital landscape, foster industrial growth, and harness AI to advance the continent’s communications industry.

Prominent attendees included Nfaly Sylla, Director of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications, and Digital Economy of Guinea; Li Zhengmao, Chairman of WBBA; Ke Ruiwen, Chairman of China Telecom; Norbert Prihoda, Deputy General Manager of Tunisia Telecom; Sunil Piyarlall, Head of Network Architecture at Openserve; Jin Zhiguo, Vice President of Huawei's Optical Product Line; Pieter Viljoen, General Manager of YOFC Africa; and Tebogo Moloi, Head of Cloud Engineering at Standard Bank Group. These distinguished speakers delivered keynote addresses emphasizing the role of broadband in Africa’s digital and socio-economic transformation.

Key Discussions and Insights

Bridging the Digital Divide
In her speech, Nfaly Sylla highlighted Guinea's recent progress, with broadband coverage in urban areas increasing by 25% and rural areas by 15%. Despite these advances, she noted that 800 million Africans still lack internet access. Sylla called for expanded digital infrastructure, improved affordability, and a concerted effort to bridge the digital divide. She stressed that broadband is not only essential for economic growth but also for fostering inclusive development in areas like education and healthcare.

Global Collaboration and Opportunities
Li Zhengmao, WBBA Chairman, underscored the association's commitment to openness, inclusiveness, and win-win cooperation. He emphasized the importance of pooling global expertise to address challenges in Africa’s cloud-network broadband sector and create a brighter digital future for the continent.

China Telecom’s Vision for Africa
Ke Ruiwen of China Telecom shared the company’s transition from a traditional telecom operator to a technology-driven enterprise. He introduced their strategy of integrating networks, cloud services, and AI to build new digital infrastructure. Ruiwen expressed China Telecom’s readiness to share its expertise with African partners to drive economic growth and close the digital divide.

Tunisia Telecom’s Success Story
Norbert Prihoda shared Tunisia Telecom’s achievements, including 4G network coverage reaching 99% of the population. He highlighted the company’s use of AI for network optimization, enabling faster problem diagnosis and improved customer service. Prihoda encouraged further collaboration among operators to promote high-quality development.

Broadband Innovation for Growth
Sunil Piyarlall of Openserve analyzed broadband demand from the perspectives of users, governments, and enterprises. He emphasized the need for innovation, fair regulatory environments, and robust cybersecurity measures to foster digital inclusion.

Expanding Fiber Broadband in Africa
Jin Zhiguo of Huawei pointed to the rapid growth of fiber broadband globally and its transformative potential for Africa. He highlighted Huawei’s proprietary solutions aimed at expanding broadband coverage, improving user experience, and advancing cloud-network integration.

YOFC’s Role in Infrastructure Development
Pieter Viljoen discussed YOFC’s evolution into a comprehensive service provider and its efforts in deploying over one million kilometers of optical cable across 90% of African countries. This infrastructure has significantly contributed to Africa’s digital transformation.

Shared Infrastructure for Cost-Effective Expansion
Tebogo Moloi emphasized the importance of shared network infrastructure to address the high costs and long return cycles of broadband projects. Highlighting success stories from operators like Safaricom and Airtel, he noted that shared infrastructure has increased rural network coverage by 30% in two years.

WBBA’s Commitment to Global Connectivity

The WBBA, a Geneva-based global nonprofit organization, plays a pivotal role in fostering cooperation among broadband operators, manufacturers, policymakers, and investors. With 128 members—including China Telecom, Huawei, Swisscom, and Nokia—the WBBA is dedicated to advancing cloud-network innovation, enhancing technical collaboration, and shaping the future of global broadband infrastructure.

The 2024 Broadband Development Conference marked a milestone by hosting its first event in Africa, uniting stakeholders to address challenges, share strategies, and unlock Africa’s vast digital potential. As broadband becomes increasingly central to education, healthcare, and economic growth, collaborative efforts like these will drive the continent closer to a connected and prosperous future.

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Key Messages
Key Messages
Recommendations
Recommendations
The Importance of Greater Broadband Investment​
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Key Messages

Advanced cloud technology together with superior end-to-end connectivity can enable a wider and more sophisticated range of applications that can in turn drive greater innovation, efficiency, and wealth.
Both enterprises and broader industry ecosystems are actively looking at broadband’s role in enabling their digital transformation. Most respondents to the WBBA’s Thought Leadership Enterprise Survey stated that they need faster and more reliable internet to run their business applications.
Certainly, in the short to medium term, xDSL, cable modem, fixed-wireless access (FWA), and satellite are all expected to have a role in the delivery of broadband services. However, full-fiber access will always deliver the optimum experience and remains the most sustainable and cost-efficient option.
There is a danger therefore for governments to base their cost-benefit analysis on a national economic view. However, such analysis will miss all the social benefits, as well as the more local economic benefits, that advanced broadband networks can bring. Governments must take all benefits into account, including more localized ones, when creating national broadband policies.
However, future applications will not only need ultra-high-speed services but also ultra-low latency and jitter, with high levels of reliability and consistency if they are to function properly. Countries with networks that are not capable of meeting such criteria will be left behind as the world moves to the next phase of internet applications such as the “metaverse.”
Fiber networks are significantly more environmentally friendly than equivalent copper-based networks, and can help support other green initiatives such as greater working from home, the use of advanced videoconferencing, etc. Fiber-based networks also require less maintenance due to there being less active equipment in the field, and can therefore reduce operators’ operational costs.
With rollout of new access technologies like 5G and Fiber, IPv6 reached more than 30% penetration worldwide (APNIC) and is rapidly growing. IPv6 Enhanced technologies, including segment routing over IPv6, per flow monitoring and AI, enable a multitude of objects and people to be flexibly connected to the proper services, granting end-to-end quality of experience.
Based on the responses from the WBBA Thought Leadership Survey, respondents believed, on average, this coverage could be expanded to approximately 70% through private investment. It is clear that government support will be needed to get to 100%.
However, a lack of data on the available infrastructure, access to key infrastructure such as ducts and in-building networks, and a lack of understanding both internally and externally are also key barriers to further investment.
Respondents to the WBBA survey stated that a reduction in regulatory barriers, greater flexibility in partnership arrangements, copper switch-off regulations, and setting out minimum service standards for network installations, would all take priority over financial support.

Recommendations

All countries must look to maximize the potential of broadband. This means creating long-term national broadband plans that evolve around three basic phases of broadband adoption:

  • Phase 1: Fast deployment of basic connectivity (most likely focusing on wireless technologies)
  • Phase 2: Continued rollout of fixed-broadband access to 100% of premises
  • Phase 3: Continued investment in advanced broadband technologies to move to gigabit societies and beyond.

In order to help facilitate this evolution to advanced broadband networks, government organizations and regulators must consider:

  • Implementing regulatory flexibility, including the removal of outdated or non-essential regulation
  • Introducing flexibility in partnership arrangements; for example, allowing agreements between players, such as co-financing, collaborative models, public-private partnerships, etc.
  • Facilitating deployment through municipality approvals, using existing resources (government buildings, streetlights, ducts, etc.) and sharing infrastructure and facilities, including in-building networks. This should also include other types of utility infrastructure where possible
  • Providing financial assistance through investment support, incentives, and subsidies; e.g., universal service funds
  • Improving access to telecom facilities and physical infrastructure; improving procedures for rights of way and accessing public infrastructure, as well as broadband mapping.
Making the Recommendations a Reality

Operators, enterprises, vendors, regulators, and policy-makers should seek to create a collective voice, to evangelize, advocate, co-create, and partner in the drive toward the provision of ultra-broadband networks and services for all. Organizations such as the WBBA can help by influencing key stakeholders through discussion, education, and promotion. Specifically, the WBBA should aim to:

  • Set out the importance of greater broadband investment, not just for the good of the service provider but for countries as a whole
  • Promote regulatory, legislative, public relations agendas that help advance the interests of members through WBBA publications and live events, highlighting best-practice business models from around the world to remove any “lack of understanding at boardroom level”
  • Influence through research, discussion, and promotion of new potential marketing or naming concepts for fixed broadband to ease mass-market understanding of the different generations of broadband access – hiding technical jargon such as “Mbps,” “latency,” and “jitter” from the customer
  • Through thought leadership, media activity, and live events, continue to make the case for what governments need to recognize and do to close the industry innovation, socioeconomic, and environmental benefit gaps through infrastructure investment
  • Explore through new research the challenges and opportunities arising from changes in the industry structure, addressing its impact on the business and the standardization landscape. This includes aspects of fiber wholesale, the move toward horizontal industry structure with separation of infrastructure and services, and the change of customer relationship to digital
  • Work with stakeholder partners to understand and promote the potential of future applications that will bring new benefits to broadband customers and wider society
  • Develop in-depth thought-leadership research on the new revenue opportunities advanced networks can provide to service providers in both the consumer and enterprise markets
  • Develop and highlight best-practice investment models that show the true return on investment of a full-fiber rollout to both private companies and government organizations
  • Champion the needs of its members to highlight barriers to future investment, creating a platform to enable open discussion between different types of stakeholder to encourage greater cooperation and new partnerships.