‘On Wednesday, during a keynote speech Elon Musk gave at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, the SpaceX founder and CEO, Elon Musk announced a major update on the rollout timeline for his low-Earth orbit high-speed broadband internet service, Starlink: “In August we should have global connectivity in everywhere except the poles”’, reports Samuel Nwite
Ladies and gentlemen, a new cambrian moment is here for digital entrepreneurial capitalism and rural Africa is going to benefit. Reading the report from Samuel, you can see that he is cutting prices in multiples. Please if you are not building because there is no internet connectivity, I am telling you to begin to build. This is going to change the market and bring a new basis of competition.
From state monopolies (land lines) to CDMA, from CDMA to GSM, and possibly, we will move from GSM to satellite broadband. If that happens, the market cap of most telcos in Africa would be recalibrated. I am not telling you to call your stock broker to dump your holdings, but watch the price point Starlink arrives at, because as he noted in that statement, he wants to unleash $30 billion into the sector.
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If he does, that would be an asymmetric playbook in the likes of Jio, with global flavours! Yet, the execution goes beyond technology: national regulators could even decide how all plays out. Be watching for GSM-led satellite last mile argument over what many would desire which is unbounded agency module, with or without GSM license.
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When Mr Samuel work got published I saw all coming true. Yes, it late 2021 and we are just 5 months to the year of immerse connectivity, so, if your business is not powered by the internet then you may be missing out of the juice in globalization.
That said, my mind goes to the Telco, how would they survive when the heat comes on and. What would be their fate in the face of 5G implementation?