Building Africa’s digital future

ZIMBABWE’S BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE: focus from supply to consumption

.

Connectivity: widening focus fromsupply to consumption

• Overview : Liquid Telecom • Undersea Capacity in Africa• Internet Capacity in Zimbabwe• Zimbabwe’s Connectedness (The consumption

factor)• Fibre Project• FTTH• IP Backhaul project• Keeping Local Traffic Local• Peering In Africa• Challenges and Issues

Overview: Liquid Telecom

• Started Operations in Zimbabwe 2009/2010• Launched high speed fibre linking Zimbabwe to South Africa

and the rest of the world in 2010 • Launched high speed fibre linking Zambia to Zimbabwe in 2011• More than 8000 km of fibre currently live running traffic • Further construction projects underway • Services include IP transit, National backhaul, International and

National • MPLS, International high speed Ethernet and legacy STM-X SDH

connections • Acquired Zimbabwe Online (ZOL) in 2012• Launched DWDM in 2013 • Started rolling out Fibre to the home through GPON in 2012

2001SAT3

Undersea Capacity Growth In Africa Since 2001

2009SeacomTEAMs

2012ACE

2013SAex, ACE, TEAMs, Seacom, WACS, EASSY,

SAT 3

Fibre Capacity 2001

Fibre Capacity 2012

Fibre Capacity 2013

International (Fibre) Capacity Supply Growth In Zimbabwe

(Since 2009) Gb/s

Before 2009

2009 (PTEL)

No Fibre CapacitySatellite only

150M (Via Botswana)

2010 (LTZ, AFR)2.6G

2011 (ALL)

2012 (LTZ Expansion)

2013 (LTZ DWDM)

2014 (LTZ DWDM??)

6G

20G

50G

100G??

Liquid Telecom ZimbabweInternational Capacity Growth

2010 2011 2012 2013 20140

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

International Capacity graph in Gbps

Undersea capacity Zimbabwe --> South Africa

Measuring Zimbabwe’s ConnectednessFacts and Figures

• ITU estimates that only 16% of Africa is online (by end of 2013)• Fewer than 10% of fixed broadband subscriptions offer speeds of at least 2Mb/s

Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014Average (in Africa)

Fixed Telephone Subscriptions per 100 Inhabitants

2.72 2.99 2.90 2.66 2.20 2.34   6*

Percentage of Individuals using Internet11.40 11.36 11.50 15.70 17.09

**     16

Mobile Cellular Subscriptions per 100 iinhabitants

12.94 30.96 58.88 68.87 91.91 103   63

WHAT NEXT?

• We still need to extend optic fibre trunk routes This is why we are trenching everyday (4km/day)

• We need more local content Bandwidth without consumption is meaningless Next area of focus for Liquid Telecom

• We need ways to pay for services online Convenience Also improves local content Opportunity for local service providers

• We need Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)

What Next?

• We need more access Network Coverage • And this needs a variety of technologies to

achieveLTE Fibre to the Home (FTTH), GPON, WiMax

• We need data centres Reliable power Reliable connectivity

• We need content Partnership between Network providers and

content providers

Enhancing Zimbabwe’s ConnectednessFibre Project

• Provides a very high capacity optic fibre network using state of the art technology • High availability assured through the use of the ring and mesh topologies • It’s mostly a construction project meant to build Africa’s digital future and bridge connectivity gap for landlocked nations.• Also provides international connectivity to the rest of the world through undersea cables namely SEACOM, EASSY, WACS, SAT3 and TEAMS

Fibre Quality• Buried Ducted fibre 1m deep and OPGW on HV Power

lines • Nodes have High Availability Power Systems • Next Generation SDH and DWDM • High speeds on all routes • Ring protection • Backed up with NOC, and field engineering• Metro rings in the cities • SLA cannot be matched within the region• Fibre to the Premises in business and residential

districts

Enhancing Zimbabwe’s ConnectednessFTTH

• Extending fibre connectivity to residential areas • Uses latest GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network)

technology which allows bandwidth of up to 50Mbps per home

• Future proof• The GPON network has now passed in excess of 7000

homes• Trenching is ongoing at an average rate of 4km per day.• By the end of project, Harare (and other Zimbabwe cities)

will be among the most connected city in the World.

Enhancing Zimbabwe’s Connectedness:IP Backhaul for Mobile Operators

• World internet usage set to increase to 3 billion users• The number of mobile-broadband subscriptions now 2.3

billion• 55% of this in Developing countries• However, backhaul is the biggest challenge for MNOs• Bandwidth hungry applications and fast speed access

networks wont mean much without a complete and unified end to end simplified backhaul infrastructure.

• Liquid Telecom has built a mobile backhaul solution that smoothly overcomes the challenges of legacy 2G/3G backhaul infrastructure.

• The design has a ring architecture for high availability and a core of 100Gigabits per second to cater for varying mobile operator needs (Liquid is the first in Africa to achieve this speed)

Enhancing Zimbabwe’s Connectedness:Liquid Telecom In Africa

• Building one Network across multiple bordering countries

• Licenced in 11 African countries• Crossing borders• Open to JVs and partnerships • A “Carrier’s Carrier”• Servicing the needs of all different types of

operators• Diverse products to support enterprise, home user,

rural broadband • Africa’s Largest International Terrestrial Fibre

Network

AFRICA FIBRE FOOTPRINT

Liquid Telecom Internet traffic Breakdown (Mb/s)

695.37

6.79

762

3018

Google 15.51% Zinx 0.15%JINX 17% Undersea to London 67.33%

Only 0.15% of all Liquid Telecom traffic is exchanged at ZINX (NB: Most of the traffic is not local to local)

Keep Local Traffic Local

• Of the top 50 “Zimbabwean” websites, only 10 are hosted in Zimbabwe.

• We are using undersea capacity to access the following; techzim.co.zw newsday.co.zw newzimbabwe.com Dailynews.co.zw ….And many others

• This has a significant bearing on the price per megabyte of internet bandwidth. Bulk capacity is international hence the high cost.

• ITU estimates that residential fixed broadband costs in developing countries amount to 30% of average income! This can come down as we improve local to local content.

Keep Local Traffic Local!

• We need data centres Reliable power Reliable connectivity

• We need content: Build partnerships between network providers and content providers

• We need to gradually move to the cloud! • Cloud computing is a way of delivering and using IT

services “on demand” and in a manner in which the services are flexible, scalable and cost effective. Allows users to access and store information and use software functionality on remote servers owned/operated by third parties as and when they are needed

Opportunities in the Cloud

• Zimbabwe was ranked as the second most “cloud ready” country in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2011 (The study/analysis was for 11 African countries:

http://theafricanfile.com/ict/the-cloud-and-africa-indicators-for-growth-of-cloud-computing)

Some of the factors considered were:Broadband Penetration Ease of Doing Business (The more difficult it is

to do business, the more people will be forced onto the cloud)

Literacy Rate

Enhancing Zimbabwe’s CloudReadiness

• Cloud Service Delivery via Private (MPLS) Links Secure Predictable Performance (SLA) Suitable for both Public or Private cloud solutions

Local Content: The AfricanPerspective• We love peering! • Present at more African IXPs than any other operator

(arguably)• JINX and KIXP are the most significant in terms of traffic

exchange • Liquid Telecom also present at LINX which has members from

more African countries than any other European IXP• South Africa (JINX) and Kenya(KIXP) are regional Hubs• London is a strategic hub for Africa as a lot of African Sub

Sea cables end up there• Also peering with other global carriers and content providers

is possible in these locations• We are also present at ZINX, BINX, ZIXP, UIXP, RINEX but

traffic to these is not so significant.• We support IXPs and participate in them actively

“Local” Content In Africa

• For our case we see that a sizeable percentage of total (“Local” –African) traffic from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia is for South Africa

• Mostly South Africa News and TV, Internet banking, email/commerce

• Hardly any traffic at all between other neighbours say Zimbabwe and Zambia or Zimbabwe and Botswana

• Like Zimbabwe, Pan African interest sites (e.g. Big Brother Africa; Iroko TV) are usually hosted in USA or Europe

Challenges

• Clarity of telecommunications and ICT policy • Regulatory conditions to allow growth • Co-ordination and cooperation with government

departments and parastatals• Roads, Power, Local govt policy, Customs and Excise

(borders) • Co-ordination and cooperation between operators • Construction projects • Unique Zimbabwean challenges

Lack of trust Most players shun win/win agreements

Questions