Wireless broadband’s HUGE potential in Africa!

By raheem

Most news stories about internet access are interesting from a technical or business perspectives. But once in a while, you come across a story that gives you the warm fuzzies in boatloads! The story of wireless broadband in Africa is just such a story. One of the great challenges of the digital divide has been the high cost of providing internet access to poor or low demand communities. This challenge is even greater in countries with little telecom infrastructure.

Wireless broadband, specifically WIMAX is proving to be a low cost answer to the digital divide challenge. I came across this excellent article about a WIMAX deployment in South Africa. The cost savings listed are tremendous, not to mention, the speed of deploying WIMAX based internet access.

According to Internetworldstats.com, Africa with a total population of close to 1 billion, has one of the lowest internet penetrations at 3.6%. But between 2000 and 2007, Africa also witnessed a 643% jump in internet access. Now if wireless broadband increases the adoption rate to 1000% in the next 5 years, then by 2012, Africa should have about 330 million internet users! That’s 300 million new users on the internet. This means new startups in Africa to power the needs of African users, new mom and pop entrepreneurs in Africa, new ways to bring education to the kids, new ways to bring health care… the list just goes on and on. Its a fantastic story and the best thing is its very realistic and doable! I will continue to seek out these great stories and post them here.