Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink is just about ready in Nigeria. But the price will shock many people: US$43/month service and a one-time hardware cost of $600. With that, you get a high-speed, low-latency broadband internet in remote and rural locations across the nation. In the US, the average cost for service is $110/month. So, it will be interesting to know if the bandwidth will be the same since the price in Nigeria is well lower.

What can I write? If you have a project that needs this and you have the funds, the solution works. We have deployed it in Nigeria for months: “We have been using the SpaceX Starlink system in Nigeria for months, and the thing works. The uptime is good.  We bought it in  the United States and deployed it on a farm in Nigeria, to help in our agriculture business.”

No matter how you see it, the pricing does not make sense for a consumer business in Nigeria. So, it is very likely that for a long time, the focus will be companies. If that is the case, it may not be really bad.

Otherwise, the $billionaire can open the typical playbook: subsidize the hardware and make up via services. But that may be hard as Nigeria does not have a reliable credit system to build that type of business. So, it seems this service will serve the 1% before it scales to the 99% in years.

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Comment 1: Hi Prof Ndubuisi, as you know through engaging with Tekedia Institute over the years, the Nigerian Market in anything to do with data transport and bandwidth provision is something I am particularly strong on.

The American market isn’t something I look at from user perspective so its enlightening to hear its $110 average in US.. Some would argue that’s just geo flexing on what different markets can bear, but there has to be a profitizing strategy for any market, and when you are talking hardware provision and core engineering from abroad, then a global providers’ profitizing route for Nigeria becomes more expensive, not cheaper.

So its either going to be about reduced QoS or ramping fees over time with the $600 as a hostage to fortune.

I already answered Tola about this yesterday, forgive the paste.

Also if anybody wants a background on Data Transport/Telecoms in Nigeria, I wrote this a few years ago. Some new developments have come since but it is still a good historical point of reference for readers:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-mc-keown-nigeria-expert_nigerian-telecommunications-architecture-activity-6738832367445708801-GUUJ?

Comment 2: Mr. Musk skimming pricing strategies looks too ambitious for an emerging market like Nigeria. No one knows the reasons for this pricing template, but one would have thought Mr Musk would have explored and exploited the historical statistics on data usage and pricing of Nigeria consumers in arriving to this prices.

Mr Musk need a critical mass to pull through and not 1% Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe. The 1% cannot sustain Starlink in the long run and the mass market is the ordinary Nigerian who considers close substitute and competition prices over service offerings. Do you have a data on how MTN 5g router pegged at 50k NGN is doing, even with the “amazing” service offerings?

Also, the big four grass root GSM operators ( MTN, Glo, Airtel & 9mobile) in that space would not fold their arms to allow Mr Musk to disrupt their territories.
Meanwhile, do you have a hold on the communique of the meeting these players held with NCC when Mr Musk announced the arrival of Starlink in Nigeria? I think a peep into that would provide an insight on how the market would react eventually.

…What is the stage in the industry Mr. Musk is coming to play in?

One of the most crucial aspect part of any business entering into an existing competitive market is the price. A “big picture” contextual may or not be realized, if the market rejects the products.

You may want to reference the case studies of how many wonderful products / companies died at introductory stage of the product life cycle due to pricing. We are talking about an emerging market here. Do you have insight into the empirical data? What is the total available market (TAM) of the industry?

Comment 3: One thing I have learnt from is “Never estimate the buying power of Nigerians”…
Despite the acclaimed 113M Nigerians living in poverty, the country is still a viable market for consumer goods of which Starlink will not be an exception. At the prices you stated above, I can bet you that the product will be a sellout in Nigeria. Watch and see how 3, 4, 5 families/individuals/businesses will pull resources together and buy the hardware to share. Those that can afford it will be a child’s play when compared to the poverty rate in our country. Elon Musk will make a kill here in Nigeria. Let me stop here for now!

Comment 4: Ndubuisi Ekekwe I think the pricing is based on a differential pricing model between high income and low income countries and may not necessarily have any impact on the bandwidth.

Having said that, we agree that the price is somewhat prohibitive in Nigeria / low income countries and would only serve the 1% as you have described but at the same time, the good side is that Elon Musk has shown what is possible.

As long as other players are able to come into the market in the long run, competition will drive down the price in future. We need challengers who will innovate in this field and compete head-on with Elon.

This is the new normal in California: disclosure of salary ranges. We can see that Apple program managers make between $121,000 and $230,000, while Facebook’s parent company (Meta) workers make $253,000-$327,000 as directors of software engineering.

Salary transparency has arrived in Silicon Valley, under a new law that has come into effect requiring companies in California to disclose job salaries. Companies with over 15 employees must share salary range on job listings of all types. The pay transparency rule aims to address gender and racial pay gaps, and increase labor market competition for those groups. It also means tech outsiders can get an insight into what top tech companies pay their staff. According to some job listings posted this week, an Apple program manager in the augmented reality group is on $121,000-$230,000, while a director of software engineering at Meta gets $253,000-$327,000.

But the most revealing is Netflix with a salary range of $150k to $900k for Data Engineer (L5) – Games. With that range, I do not see how the disclosure helps.

• 7+ years of software/data engineering experience working with video game analytics (i.e you are familiar with how key metrics such as DAU, MAU and retention rates are computed in an ETL).
• Passionate about building intuitive data models and an expert in distributed data processing patterns.
• Highly proficient in at least one of these programming languages: Java, Python, or Scala.
• Comfortable with complex SQL.
• Expert in engineering data pipelines using big data technologies (Hive, Presto, Spark, Flink) on large-scale data sets demonstrated through years of experience.
• Conceptually familiar with AWS cloud resources (S3, EC2, RDS etc).
• Excel at taking vague requirements and crystallizing them into scalable data solutions.
• Excited about operating independently, demonstrating excellence, and learning new technologies and frameworks.

[ ]

At Netflix, we carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors to determine your personal top of market. We rely on market indicators to determine compensation and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to get it right. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary and will also be dependent on your location.

The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically $150,000 – $900,000.

How Much Tech Firms Pay

The NYC Department of Education has banned the use of ChatGPT by students and teachers in New York City schools due to concerns that the AI tool can hamper learning and lead to misinformation.

Students in New York are no longer allowed to access the ChatGPT following the ban, according to Chalkbeat.

A spokesperson for the education department said the decision was made due to the possibility that the tool could have “negative impacts on student learning,” and also “concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.”

The decision of the New York City Department of Education, the US’ largest school system, could inspire other districts to adopt similar rules.

The arrival of ChatPGT, which has the dynamic ability to add context to queries, is causing a stir across the internet and fields. It uses GPT-3.5, a large language model released last year, to generate answers and authentic-looking responses to queries about all topics. ChatGPT helps users to accomplish tasks such as creating poems, composing college essays and writing code.

Amid concern that the program could encourage cheating and plagiarism, schools around the world are yet to find the perfect response to the AI-powered chatbot.

“Due to concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content, access to ChatGPT is restricted on New York City Public Schools’ networks and devices,” said education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle. “While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success.”

The education department’s ban does not entirely cut off access to the chatbot. Both teachers and students can still get on the site on non-education department devices or internet networks, per the report.

Individual schools can still request access to the site if they’re planning to study the technology behind the chatbot, a department spokesperson said.

Educators are concerned that ChatGPT will hinder critical thinking skills in students, curtailing their ability to handle assignments independently.

The tool is spreading like wildfire, with major players in the web search business already working to accommodate it. Microsoft is reportedly planning to integrate ChatGPT into Bing to give its search engine an edge over competitors like Google Search.

It is not clear if other schools will follow the steps of the NYC Department of Education. The body’s decision has been met with criticism.

Chalkbeat quoted Adam Stevens, a longtime New York City history teacher who started his career at Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn and now teaches at Brooklyn Tech, criticizing the decision as counterproductive. Stevens compares the current reaction to those meted to Google in its early days.

“People said the same thing about Google 15 or 20 years ago when students could ‘find answers online,’” he said.

In his argument, Stevens said the best way to discourage students from using ChatGPT and building up their critical writing skills is by “assigning them work that is inviting them to explore things worth knowing,” and moving away from teaching formulaic writing based on strict rubrics.

“We’ve trained a whole generation of kids to pursue rubric points and not knowledge,” he added, “and of course, if what matters is the point at the end of the semester, then ChatGPT is a threat.”

However, while there’s been more people supporting the NYC Department of Education’s decision than those criticizing it, there is a growing call for students to be allowed to explore and see how ChatGPT can benefit them.

Bleepingcomputer reported on a recent experiment conducted by Professor Scott Graham at the University of Texas, which proves that AI writing can play a beneficial pedagogical role, helping students craft their genre awareness, content revision, and writing style skills.