Staff Reporter
TELECOM Namibia announced that it plans to invest more than N$2,3 billion in the next five-plus years to modernise the fixed and mobile national network in the country in an effort to accelerate progress towards a digital transformation.
This comes after the World Bank Group released a diagnostic report entitled “Creating Markets in Namibia”, that emphasised that there is a need to promote and invest in digital infrastructure in the country.
While referring to Namibia as a pioneer in Africa for launching both 3G and 4G/LTE networks, the report noted that Namibia lags behind other upper-middle countries in terms of the adoption of digital technologies. This lag, the report indicated, exists despite the fact that the country has a mature telecommunications market that provides relatively good coverage.
The report also highlighted that Namibia lags behind its regional peers in terms of digital mobile broadband adoption as the country had a 36% mobile data adoption in 2021, while its regional peers stood at 52%. Considering these shortcomings (plus the high cost of data and the slow rollout and uptake of fiber) the report suggested that there is a need for a digital transformation in the country – a suggestion that Telecom said it “couldn’t agree more with”.
According to Telecom, the company has already made efforts to improve mobile data adoption rates, via its subsidiary Powercom, in 2021/2022 by deploying new and upgraded 3G and 4G TN mobile sites in rural and urban areas alike. Telecom also noted that an initial investment of about US$5 million has already been made in realising the landing of the Google Equiano submarine cable, which was co-landed with the Paratus Group in Swakopmund on 1 July.
Telecom said that the Equiano cable, which is projected to provide the country with a capacity of 4 Terabytes per second (TBps), is expected to follow the same trends of the West Africa Cable System (WACS), which enabled an average content utilisation growth of 50% per annum.
Under their capital expenditures (CapEx) plan, Telecom explained, the company intends to increase the current population coverage and the quality of service as well. Telecom said that the next phase of the CapEx plan involves the acceleration of fiber rollout to pass and connect thousands of homes, thereby improving the national coverage, which stands at about 65,2%.
Still, while the benefits of a much-needed digital transformation is evident, there are some challenges that hinder progress towards this goal. According to Telecom, access to stable and reliable electricity is one of those challenges. The company said that between March and June alone, they experienced 136,5 days in downtime between Cenored, Erongo Red, NamPower and Nored. These disruptions, Telecom said, lead to poor customer service and the company is therefore engaging the utility counterparts to address the problem.
