I do not think you adequately understand the economics of the
situation.
slide 22, IP transit cost.
Your 200mbit/sec link that costs you $300 in hardware
is going to cost you $4960/month to actually get IP traffic
across, in Nairobi. Yes, that's about $60,000/year.
Could *you* afford to "get with the times" if that's what
your bandwidth was going to cost you?
Please, do a little research on what the real
costs are before telling others they need to
"simply get with the times."
Then Africa in particular is specifically disadvantaged - I spent a good deal of time in Haiti and 4G connectivity was abundant at good speeds, as were terrestrial fiber connections.
Mirrors my experience in half a dozen other 3rd world countries. Unless there’s something particularly oppressive about Africa?
Then Africa in particular is specifically disadvantaged - I spent a good deal of time in Haiti and 4G connectivity was abundant at good speeds, as were terrestrial fiber connections.
Haiti isn't exactly a large country.
Africa has a ton of countries Haiti could fit into 3 times over, if not
more.
Mirrors my experience in half a dozen other 3rd world countries.
Never quite understood (or like) the term "3rd world", but...
Unless there’s something particularly oppressive about Africa?
There is a meeting in Cape Town coming up in September, AfPIF (Africa
Peering & Interconnect Forum). If you have some time to kill and a bit
of dosh lying around, come down and have a look at what all the fuss is
about :-).
Mark.
it's a term which refers to post-WWII militarily non-aligned countries, for example Kenya, Switzerland, Sweden or the DRC. Obviously there is a clear correlation between mobile data coverage quality and political neutrality stances - I don't understand why you can't see this.
Nick
My refrain was tongue-in-cheek.
I know its etymology being rooted in military alignment. However, I'm
referring to it from the evolution of the term being associated with
poverty in recent years/decades. I've never quite heard anyone call
Switzerland a 3rd world country.
If someone thinks (lack of) political neutrality is a guaranteed measure
of mobile data coverage and penetration, the Chinese and Malaysians must
be doing something different; being 2nd and 3rd world countries and all
:-)...
But seriously, let's try to stay on-topic.
Mark.
4G depends on Radio. Radio works very well in an environment like Hispañola (the island containing Haiti and Dominican Republic).
You’ve got some convenient very high central locations, lots of nice conductive ground-plane salt-water surrounding the area, and very little terrain interference from those high points to the vast majority of the island.
Africa has a much larger and more diverse geography. The water surrounding it is much much further from the central locations and the central locations are NOT proportionately has high above (and in some cases even below) the surrounding terrain.
Africa also has a wide variety of political and cultural issues and multiple distinct political frameworks to deal with. (Haiti has only one and if you throw in all of Hispañola, you still only have 2).
There are parts of Africa where 4G works relatively well. There are parts where you’re lucky if you can get anything at all. There are parts where electricity, indoor plumbing, and safe drinking water would be a novelty. (Of course that last one is true in Haiti as well).
Indeed, I think the biggest thing to realize is that speaking of Africa as if it were a single place is as big a failure as speaking of Asia like it is a single place. Both consist of many countries, many cultures, a wide variety of terrains and geological and geographical features, and a great diversity of experiences to be had.
Angola is as different from Zambia as Afghanistan is from Vietnam.
Owen
The one thing that you CAN generalize about a great many developing nation
telecom markets, which is different than the US and Western Europe:
Many urban locations have a complete absence of functioning last mile,
legacy copper telecom infrastructure, which in a US city you would see used
for ADSL2+ or VDSL2 or g.fast on old POTS phone lines, or
DOCSIS3.0/DOCSIS3.1 on 75 ohm coaxial cable TV plant. Leaving "4G" and
various forms of fixed point to multipoint wireless, whether LTE based or
not, as the only viable residential and SMB broadband service option.
And this is a bad thing, because?
Just because it is done differently doesn't mean it is any less
effective. Mobile phones have significantly overtaken all other forms of
physical infrastructure in most of Africa, and the amount of data being
generated as well as the growing rate of penetration is some of the
highest in the world.
MNO's have taken slightly different approaches to how they build and
scale for Africa (and other developing continents such as Asia) than
they have for other regions of the world where physical infrastructure
is more rife.
Personally, I'm glad that the remaining bits of copper plant in Africa
are losing steam as folk jump straight into 3G/4G and fibre in Africa.
Coax was never really a hit in Africa (I know it was in Mozambique), but
glad we don't have to deal with that legacy either.
I am fortunate enough to live in a city where 4G/LTE is available, with
a reasonably-priced 100Mbps FTTH service to my house, as do many others
that live in major African cities where private companies are not
sitting around waiting for the gubbermint to catch up. Is there a lot
more that can and should be done? For sure! But things are happening...
Mark.
Thank you Mark for your excellent firsthand account.
I’ve observed this - the developing world (better? Same meaning but hey) does not miss copper infrastructure. That was always bad and was always going to be bad now that 4G is here. There’s just zero reason now. It’s an anchor.
-Ben
In high density urban areas last mile infrastructure (mostly copper) is considerably better than 4G.
Localized carrier powered wifi is good as well but it is not and should not be confused with 4G.
Mack
I think it depends on what it is you're trying to do. If your
application is linear IPTV streaming into your home, that probably isn't
a great idea for any kind of non-wired media. On the other hand, in
South Africa, where I live, it is routine to deliver video streaming
services (Netflix, Youtube, ShowMax, e.t.c.) to one's home over 4G/LTE,
to the extent that the service providers have special data plans that
support these kinds of use-cases.
In South Africa, I generally find wi-fi in the hotels to be pretty bad,
as the majority of them tend to be on ADSL backhaul, which averages
between 1Mbps - 4Mbps to support several dozen or more rooms. A few
hotels have migrated to fibre, but between guessing what last mile
they're on and how they operate the wi-fi network, I ALWAYS prefer to
tether my iPhone to my laptop and work when I'm on the road within the
country. In all major cities, my 3G/4G performs a lot more reliably,
better and predictably than most cafe, hotel or mall wi-fi. I don't even
bother when hotels offer their wi-fi vouchers upon check-in.
With my 4G services (Vodacom and MTN), I can average between 30Mbps -
55Mbps when tethering, and that's plenty enough for me. I have a decent
monthly data plan that I don't have to worry about running out. Of
course, performance isn't as great if you're in a remote part of the
country, but that's not unique to South Africa.
Mark.
Mark,
A couple of things, first that kind of utilization isn't feasible once
penetration rates in dense areas reach certain levels. There's a reason
that NTT Docomo moved more than 70% of their data traffic to the 3.5 GHz
band and that reason is that there's not (nor will there be) enough
wireless spectrum to meet the needs of everyone with licensed space. (That
same use case is why all the big North American providers are looking at
CBRS.) Further, 4G/5G is going to have trouble scaling to the kinds of
network demands going forward, again especially in dense areas. While it's
certainly possible today to stream unicast video over LTE and will (for a
while) even more feasible over 5G the physics simply aren't with the
wireless world.
I'd say that your example of poor DSL performance isn't unique, it happens
in some spots in the US, but in general wired performance has much higher
individual and even higher aggregate capacities *when correctly deployed. *I
doubt your hotel example is a poor deployment though, it's more likely that
the hotel owners are under paying for both the WAN connection and the WiFi
infrastructure.
Scott hit the nail on the head.
Hotel/café/mall wifi is generally horrible for the same reason urban 4g is horrible.
The backhaul and load on the available spectrum is usually excessive.
Carrier wifi is usually (but not always) equipped with decent backhaul.
However carrier wifi in stadiums usually suffers from problems with spectrum saturation.
Any wifi or 4G will eventually run out of available bandwidth on assigned spectrum.
Wifi has the advantage of being able to use smaller range restricted access points but
the stadium example shows why even that is limited when you have 40K people trying
to access the internet.
Mack
Mark,
A couple of things, first that kind of utilization isn't feasible once
penetration rates in dense areas reach certain levels. There's a
reason that NTT Docomo moved more than 70% of their data traffic to
the 3.5 GHz band and that reason is that there's not (nor will there
be) enough wireless spectrum to meet the needs of everyone with
licensed space. (That same use case is why all the big North American
providers are looking at CBRS.) Further, 4G/5G is going to have
trouble scaling to the kinds of network demands going forward, again
especially in dense areas. While it's certainly possible today to
stream unicast video over LTE and will (for a while) even more
feasible over 5G the physics simply aren't with the wireless world.
I don't disagree - fundamentally, one can't argue with the scalability
of wired media vs. any kind of wireless media. In (South) Africa, two
things are happening to scale out 4G:
* Getting the regulators to issue new spectrum to MNO's. This is also
aided by the country's migration plans from analog to digital for
free-to-air TV, which will make new spectrum available for the
MNO's. However...
* ... the above isn't moving at the pace the MNO's would like, which
is why they have become some of the most efficient mobile operators
in the world by re-farming existing spectrum and scaling that way.
I'd say that your example of poor DSL performance isn't unique, it
happens in some spots in the US,
As with the Internet, the technology is the technology regardless of
where it's applied in the world. ADSL scaling properties suffer in
Africa the same way they do in any other continent.
but in general wired performance has much higher individual and even
higher aggregate capacities /when correctly deployed./
No argument from me there. I use 3G/4G for data when I travel within the
country, as I mentioned before. When I'm at home, my FTTH service does
the job. When I'm in the office, my backbone does the job. Wireless will
never meet the demands, long-term, be it on 5G or 802.11ax. But for now,
3G/4G/LTE is the most appropriate technology for, pretty much, all of
Africa. And to be fair, it is not doing a half-bad job, across the board.
/ /I doubt your hotel example is a poor deployment though, it's more
likely that the hotel owners are under paying for both the WAN
connection and the WiFi infrastructure.
I'm a network engineer - I can tell when the issue is a pretty bad wi-fi
setup, a pretty bad LAN switch, a pretty bad NAT44 translator, or a
pretty bad ISP.
I was in Paris in March for a conference, and I couldn't get the hotel
staff to understand that the problem with the hotel Internet was both a
combination of poorly deployed wi-fi on each floor + insufficient
capacity from their ISP. Their solution to me was, "Reboot your laptop
and check again".
I don't have the luxury of data roaming when I'm outside of South
Africa. When I'm in South Africa, tethering always works better, even
when the hotel wi-fi has moments of being decent.
Mark.
There are some interesting developments with sector (down to 30* or narrower) and multi-band, multi-radio, 4x4MIMO wifi gear lately. Ubiquiti is making amazing strides in this space. Watch 40k wifi connections in a stadium become the norm soon.
I disagree entirely, and counter that the residential traffic of a major city like San Francisco isn’t over a sustained 100GigE link or three. There is ample backhaul and tremendous fiber bandwidth. It’s just all in very slightly (sometimes by a block or less) the wrong places.
For one, fiber is fixed and the audience is portable.
But carrier backhaul solutions with last mile wireless delivery is going to continue to impress.
Watch this space.
(he says somewhat hypocritically over his gig symmetric GPON FTTH)
Scott hit the nail on the head.
Hotel/café/mall wifi is generally horrible for the same reason urban
4g is horrible.
Urban 4G in Africa isn't that bad, actually. The factors are many - not
all users are on smart phones, or if they are, may default to 2G/3G more
often than 4G. Also, because data prices are not pocket-friendly in many
cases, the amount of time spent on the radio network for data is not
significant.
On the other hand, I generally get poor coverage (i.e., 1 bar) even in
urban cities when I travel the U.S., particularly on AT&T, and
sometimes, T-Mobile. Never quite understood that, but I've been having a
side discussion from this thread with some mates that has shed some
light, which makes a bit of sense to me. So not sure if that's the issue
you face, or if it's something else.
My point is while the technology has its intrinsic limitations, user
patterns and applications that differ between the developed and
developing worlds may have their part to play.
The backhaul and load on the available spectrum is usually excessive.
Spectrum, yes... see my previous response to K. Scott.
Backhaul isn't a major issue - pretty much, every MNO in Africa has
their own Metro and national fibre backbone; and in some cases, even
their own submarine backbone.
Carrier wifi is usually (but not always) equipped with decent backhaul.
Wi-fi offload has been attempted a few times by one or two MNO's in
Africa. But they can't decide between beta testing or launching. Bottom
line is wi-fi offload is not big in Africa, and yet the 3G/4G radio
network is still able to support traffic levels. I suspect it will
become more popular as the radio load increases, although one would say
the MNO's are looking at 5G before they consider wi-fi offload seriously.
However carrier wifi in stadiums usually suffers from problems with
spectrum saturation.Any wifi or 4G will eventually run out of available bandwidth on
assigned spectrum.Wifi has the advantage of being able to use smaller range restricted
access points butthe stadium example shows why even that is limited when you have 40K
people tryingto access the internet.
Agreed.
Mark.
The reason you see one or two bars in inner cities in 2018, is that given fixed spectrum, bandwidth on the aggregate can only increase if you take many smaller lower power radios, and carpet the area with them.
The only other solutions are radically increase the power, or radically increase the width of the spectrum.
-Ben
Not dissimilar problems with (SP) wi-fi scaling in dense applications.
My point is we don't generally have this issue in the major African
cities that I regularly visit, so any perspectives based on what the
U.S. may be going through cannot be wholesomely applied to other global
regions.
Mark.
This map is still a work in progress, but it's clear that roll-out of fiber across the continent is steadily growing.
Steve Huter