Are African operators ready for the surge in mobile broadband?

Press Release – November 18th, 2008

The leading international telecoms consultants from Omnitele will present the latest insights into

successful mobile broadband strategies at AfricaCom in Cape Town, South Africa, November

19th – 2008. Join senior consultant Pal Zarandy for the presentation “Techno-Economic Mobile

Broadband Business Models for Sustained Profitability”.

A strategic business model can save African operators millions of Euros in network costs and is

a powerful tool for operators to cash in on the popularity and growth of mobile broadband. A

clear technical and commercial model is critical for making fully informed business decisions

and ensuring broadband success, says the consulting experts at Omnitele.

The recent industry-wide surge in mobile broadband is both a great business opportunity and a

serious risk that needs to be managed carefully to achieve bottom-line success.

Typical mobile broadband users surf the Internet for hours and generate several gigabytes of

data per month. This kind of traffic is great, but both commercial and technical aspects need to

be mapped out well in advance to make sure that revenues are not swallowed up by

skyrocketing network costs.

In European markets many operators are already starting to feel the crunch of the everincreasing

data traffic generated by PC-users surfing the Internet with HSPA dongle modems.

A similar scenario is likely to happen in African markets in the medium term as progressive

mobile operators capitalize on the pent-up, mass-market demand for Internet access.

According to Omnitele the profitability of mobile broadband depends on striking a balance

between the quality of the service – meaning the subscriber’s broadband experience – and

network investments.

The cost of the network is very sensitive to the speed and quality of the broadband service. To

get an increase of just a few percent in quality could mean millions in additional investments. At

the same time severe service degradation can easily happen once the popularity of the service

takes off. Our mobile broadband model captures all of these variables and makes sure that all

critical aspects of the mobile broadband business can be understood.

Another challenge is indentifying the critical network bottlenecks and vendor pricing

mechanisms that are typically far from transparent.

Network investments can vary an enormous amount depending on specific network pricing

schemes. The model gives operators a powerful tool to analyze costs and negotiate better

deals with network vendors. The model is also instrumental in understanding where in the

network traffic bottlenecks will occur once mobile broadband takes off.

Omnitele Ltd. is an internationally operating telecommunications consultancy company established in 1988 upon a

combined core of engineering and operator business expertise. Our consultancy services range from network planning

and procurement to operator service portfolio planning and strategic business and technology advisory services.

Omnitele main customers are mobile operators and system suppliers in Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Caribbean

and the DNA and Finnet Groups in Finland. Omnitele headquarters are located in Finland. For more information, please

visit www.omnitele.com