In the business market, the stakes are colossal. Technologically, B2B customers are already used to complex - and costly - connections to the operator's network. The roll-out of Fibre is bringing with it a violent paradigm shift.
Pierre Fiol
The Deployment of High-Speed Broadband: An Economic Competitiveness and Territorial Development Challenge
The stakes of digital development for territories are significant: streamlining interactions between the population, merchants, services and administrations, public services, and governments; facilitating access to knowledge and education; accelerating business development by opening doors to their markets and the world. The revolution brought by networks within economies and societies is now global. No country can - or should - remain outside this transformation.
Fiber: The Backbone of Digital Development Fiber is the backbone of digital development for territories. It promises to improve the quality of life for populations, the competitiveness of businesses, the efficiency of public services, and the modernization of governments. By improving speeds and Quality of Service (QoS), the Achilles' heel of copper technologies, fiber will restore equality for citizens and businesses in accessing information.
From Fiber to FTTH: A Choice to Be Made
Building high-speed backbones is a prerequisite for any digital transformation. To collect data "to the Home" - to individual users and businesses - FTTH must rely on a high-speed access network capable of carrying vast amounts of data within and outside a country. Transport infrastructures and international interconnections are therefore key. The development of submarine cables (366 cables spanning over 800,000 km laid to date) and international programs (Warcip, Cab, RCIP) are two supporting pillars, particularly for African and Asian regions, whose connection to the global network accelerates year by year.
While fibre is the backbone of any modern network infrastructure, the ability to deliver services right to the home, with no loss of quality or speed, remains the ultimate goal. However, FTTH is not an end in itself. Connecting the last mile remains a fundamental issue once the network is in place. FTTH is just one technology among many. It can be expensive to roll out. It is only relevant if the technical, geographical, financial and marketing conditions are right: suitable infrastructure and urban plans, geography and topography, regulation, operators' investment capacity, market needs, etc. And if it makes it possible to offer B2C or B2B customers accessible and attractive prices. The choice between FTTH (or FTTx in general) and, for example, mobile access (Wimax, 4G, etc.) is often a complex one for telecoms operators. The key word here remains: adapting the technology to the context. Today, 80% of Internet access in Africa is via mobile networks.
A Lever for Image, Attractiveness, and Competitiveness of Territories
The fact remains, however, that there are major challenges in terms of the image, attractiveness and competitiveness of these regions that are linked to the very high-speed broadband connection: fibre attracts foreign investment by offering infrastructures that meet the requirements of international groups; it offers the more ‘general public’ tourist flow services that meet their expectations and uses. It encourages the emergence of new business parks and competitiveness clusters. It also helps to develop talent by facilitating the development of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems. By facilitating the national and international exchange of data, fibre opens up access to remote and hosted services (storage, security, SaaS, etc.). It enables the development of national or regional data centres. It facilitates national and international collaboration, and accelerates the emergence of start-ups. In 2016, Fintech, EdTech and Healthtech accounted for almost 30% of investment flows into Africa.
A Vector of Social and Territorial Development
In 2015, fixed Internet access was still 5 times more expensive in the least developed countries than in the most advanced countries2. So not all citizens are equal when it comes to access to information. This is nothing new. But, despite announcements about the generalisation of the Internet throughout the world, inequalities persist. On the other hand, they have shifted: connectivity has indeed become a reality for a growing number of populations, but the level of speed and quality of service are not a given. Far from it.
Yet in some countries, fibre, combined with other access technologies to connect the ‘last mile’, is a means of opening up rural areas and bringing people closer to administrative services such as health and education. In other countries, it is a lever for the development of industry and agriculture. Elsewhere still, it is a vector for social and economic development. Fibre facilitates the emergence of entrepreneurs, VSEs and SMEs, providing them with the security, reliability and services that ADSL does not.
Talent and ideas are everywhere. Being able to bring the quality of Very High Speed Broadband service to an entrepreneur's home, under sustainable economic conditions, is a tremendous boost to a country's entrepreneurial initiatives and creativity. Who would have imagined just 5 years ago hearing about Yabacon Valley3 in Nigeria or Silicon Savannah4 in Kenya?
Fibre provides access not only to ‘raw’ information, but also to essential services (education, health, administration) or economic services (OTT services), gradually giving countries the means to develop local competitors to the major international players. iROKOtv5 and BuniTV6 are perfect examples of this. The arrival of Netflix on the African market in 2016 also testifies to a sufficient level of infrastructure maturity to begin to meet market expectations.
Leveraging competition
Pooling investment and infrastructure is one of the keys to rolling out fibre to the end customer (or as close to the end customer as possible). It creates synergies between operators. Subject to rigorous supervision by regulators and clear competition rules for operators, it speeds up rollout by sharing investment costs and focusing energies on more efficient deployment. By stimulating competition, it leads to more competitive offerings at the right price for B2C and B2B customers. In this way, it helps to democratise access to a quality connection.
In addition to the pooling of resources between players in the telecoms sector alone, developing cooperation between operators and distributors is another major challenge. Many industries, such as oil companies, electricity suppliers and even road and rail infrastructure operators, are deploying fibre optic networks to serve their businesses. These very high-speed transport capacities are often under-exploited, even though they could contribute to the economic development of the countries they cross. So much so that in Africa, more and more players equipped with their own fibre networks are positioning themselves to complement the networks of telecoms operators: this is the case of the ONCF in Morocco, and Sonatrach and Sonelgaz in Algeria.
Specific challenges for each market
In the B2C market: democratising access to information, supporting changing needs and enabling the uses of tomorrow
In the most mature markets, where FTTH is easier to deploy, Fibre brings the promise of new uses: 4K content, cloudgaming, online storage. The most advanced services become accessible with unrivalled comfort and customer experience.
In more emerging markets, fibre is the means to democratise access to a quality connection, and to stimulate the development of offers and services. Only 15% of Africans have Internet access at home, while 29% already have broadband on their mobile phones8. Fibre will not upset these balances, at least not in the short term.
On the other hand, the infrastructure it will make it possible to deploy will modernise home connectivity, and accelerate the development of mobile Internet by finally providing it with a transport infrastructure that meets users' expectations.
In the B2B market: facilitating access to the digital world for all businesses
Sur le marché des Entreprises, les enjeux sont colossaux. Technologiquement, les clients B2B sont déjà habitués à des raccordements complexes - et coûteux - au réseau de l’opérateur (liaisons louées ou spécialisées,…). La Fibre amène avec son déploiement un violent changement de paradigme : la possibilité de disposer de débits énormes, avec une Qualité de Service de haut niveau, à des coûts bien plus raisonnables que par le passé. Une transformation radicale pour les opérateurs sur certains marchés, dont les offres d’accès B2B, de par le coût qu’elles représentaient, restaient inaccessibles à une part importante des clients entreprises (et notamment les TPEs et PMEs). La fibre est donc porteuse d’une promesse forte : d’accélération de leur activité et d’ouverture sur leur marché pour les entreprises ; d’élargissement de leur base clients pour les opérateurs, à condition qu’ils gèrent correctement le passage d’une économie basée sur la marge à une économie davantage centrée sur les volumes.
