DESPITE huge investments in various submarine cables for broadband deployment in Nigeria and other parts of the African continent, the lack of local content initiative has shown that the continent still suffers from the needed deployment to boost various economic activities.Presently, Nigeria and other African countries can boast of 11 major submarine fibre optic cables. These include SEAS, SAT3, Seacom, TEAMS, EASSY, LION, LION2, Glo1, MainOne, WACS and ACE.The research conducted by Informa and Telecoms Media revealed that there were few more competitive telecoms markets in the world than those in Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa, adding that it was important that carriers differentiate service quality either in terms of network quality or products.According to the survey, the ability to offer broadband services be it fixed or mobile was crucial to such differentiation.The survey revealed that just over one quarter of respondents ranked local content distribution as a very important driver of broadband services, adding that the believe was that the digitisation of Africa could only become a reality if the customer experienced of Internet services was good.Indeed, the research revealed that the supply of local content was pivotal to this customer experience: 'The demand for highly-valued and relevant content is a major driver for Internet take-up. But the primary sources of content in Africa remain international and there is a paucity of local content available.For the continued growth of broadband in Africa, it is important that this changes, without enough relevant local content, international content alone will not maintain usage at the levels required by the operator,' it noted.Furthermore, the survey stated that proving a business case for expansion was the main inhibitor to new broadband growth with 55 per cent of respondents claiming the infrastructure costs were the most significant impediment to expanding broadband rollout.Other respondents (40 per cent) point to insufficient connectivity and backhaul as providing an obstacle to broadband growth. The third-largest factor noted was the cost of retail broadband services with 37 per cent ranking this as a very important factor.The survey showed that the arrival of new submarine cables should help rectify the retail broadband service issue, noting that some evidences had shown that the EASSY and Seacom cable systems were having some impact on retail broadband markets on the east coast of Africa.It explained that the associated declines in bandwidth pricing in wholesale data markets had been significant, but this had not always crossed over to the retail market. Nevertheless, Informa and Media Telecoms believes that customers in retail broadband markets do enjoy more affordable broadband packages and greater data usage limits so pricing should become less of a factor.According to the survey, improved international capacity (34 per cent) has been the single biggest impact of the landing of new submarine cables since 2007 just ahead of lower international bandwidth pricing (32 per cent).
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