Written by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura | From Reuters

Africa’s demand for bandwidth is doubling every year, outpacing the laying of terrestrial telecom fiber links and encouraging commercial satellite operators to launch more units into orbit.

The arrival of submarine cables on Africa’s eastern shore just five years ago was largely expected to herald the end of satellite connections, which had been the region’s only link to the outside world for decades.

But the opposite is happening with Africa’s political geography – notably its many landlocked countries, such as Zambia, South Sudan and Rwanda – bringing undersea cable plans back to earth.

“If you are to provide connectivity to the masses, fiber is not the way to do it. Do you think that it would make economical sense to take fiber to every village in Kenya?” said Ibrahima Guimba-Saidou, a senior executive for Africa at Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES SA .

“Satellite is still around and will continue to be around because it’s the best medium to extend connectivity to the masses.”

Hundreds of millions of people on the continent still have no access to the Internet, he said.

At least four satellites are planned for launch this year as countries with no access to the coast have yet to benefit from at least 10 undersea cables now serving the continent.

“There will be times when they compete, but such is the growth in demand for bandwidth that there is room for plenty of players,” said Mark Newman, chief research officer at industry research company Informa Telecoms & Media.

“If you are in a landlocked country, it might well be that even though satellite would seem to be expensive compared to the cost of fiber capacity that lands on the coast somewhere, by the time you get that capacity in land, it’s no cheaper than satellite,” Newman said.

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