Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX that launched in 2019. It provides satellite internet access coverage to about 46 countries, which is also targeting the global mobile phone service after 2023

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, highlighted Starlink’s plans to expand into Africa last year.

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, is now operational in Nigeria, making it the first African country to do so.

On Monday, the firm revealed the news on its Twitter page.

In a social-media post, Nigeria’s minister of communications and digital economy, Isa Ali Pantami, celebrated the achievement.

He wrote on Twitter: “We’ve done it again. @SpaceX, thank you for hosting me in your headquarters in the United States in December 2022 to finalize the deployment logistics.”

He tweeted: “We have made it again. @SpaceX thank you for hosting me in your Headquarters, USA in December 2022 to complete the logistics for the deployment.”

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, highlighted Starlink’s plans to expand into Africa last year. In May, he announced that Starlink had been granted permission to operate broadband internet in Nigeria and Mozambique.

Starlink has over one million customers and operates in dozens of countries. Musk, on the other hand, claims that the service is losing money.

SpaceX has provided the country with thousands of Starlink dishes since Russia invaded in February. The billionaire said in October that only 10,630 out of 25,300 Starlink terminals in Ukraine were paying for service.

TechEconomy understands that Meta, along with Telecom Egypt, China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Vodafone, and the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) announced the 2Africa cable back in 2020. 

At 45,000km, it is the world’s largest subsea cable and is set to connect 33 locations at 46 locations across Africa, Europe, and Asia once it’s complete.

The cable is landing at MTN facilities in five countries, including Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Ghana in addition to the two in South Africa. This is the first of a series of six landings with MTN.

The 2Africa West cable will be supported by the Yzerfontein landing, which is scheduled to go live in 2023, while the 2Africa East cable will be supported by the MTN South Africa landing station in Duynefontein, which is scheduled to go live in 2024.

“Strategic collaborations like the one we have with the 2Africa consortium will help us accelerate and deepen internet usage and socio-economic advancement across the African continent,” MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said.

Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four- and five-fold over the next 5 years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand”.

MTN GlobalConnect CEO Frédéric Schepens added: “MTN GlobalConnect is pleased to participate in this bold 2Africa subsea cable project. 

The initiative complements our terrestrial fiber strategy to connect African countries to each other and the rest of the world. 

We are building scale infrastructure assets to meet the explosive growth in data traffic and accelerate the digital economy on the continent, by creating a pan-African fiber railroad driving affordable connectivity.”

2Africa’s cable recently landed in Barcelona at AFR-IX Telecom’s new CLS. It also recently landed at Ras Ghareb, Egypt in partnership with Telecom Egypt, which said another landing point is expected in Port Said in the Mediterranean Sea in the coming months. It has also previously landed in Genoa, Italy; and Djibouti City, Djibouti.

The cable’s Middle East & Asia extension, known as 2Africa Pearls, is set to land at Airtel’s CLS in Mumbai, India.

9mobile, operated by Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Limited, is one of the telecommunications companies operating in Nigeria and available data suggest the telco must innovate and urgently source funds to remain in the telecommunications business. 

Statistics available on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC’s) website point to the fact 9mobile lost not less than 10 million subscribers in the last seven years. The operator, formerly known as Etisalat, transited to 9mobile in 2017. 

Customers are the fulcrum of any business and if 9mobile continues to lose subscribers, going out of the telecommunications business might be imminent. 

As Nigeria’s fourth-largest telecommunications network operator, the company had over 22 million subscribers and about 12.9 percent of the telecom market share. 

Recall that Etisalat had obtained a $1.2 billion (N377.4 billion) syndicated loan in 2013 from a consortium of 13 Nigerian banks, which it failed to pay back. This led to the takeover by the banks on June 20th, 2017.

Following the interventions by the Nigerian Communications Commission and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), new owners of 9mobile were announced.

Therefore, the company rebranded to 9mobile after the Abu Dhabi-headquartered Etisalat exited the Nigerian market following the debt servicing issues with the consortium of (lenders) banks.

9mobile, upon rebranding, promised to sustain and continuously provide innovative and value-adding propositions. These promises seem far-fetched because it has continued to lose customers to other players in the market. 

Flip to November 2022, 9mobile which had 12 million+ customers with a 6 percent market share has lost 10 million users and about 6 percent market share. 

Number of Users (Connected Lines)

The total number of connected telephone lines (GSM) in Nigeria is currently 212.2 million and 9mobile has only 12,842,575.

MTN is the largest operator by subscriber number, with a total active customer database of 81.2 million. Globacom is 59,395,911, and Airtel is 58,403,066.

Analysis of the data indicates that 9mobile lost at least 10 million subscribers over the last seven years (2016-2022).

Going by the statistics on NCC’s website, 9mobile lost 1,869,844 subscribers between September 2017 and September 2019. And within twelve months, September 2019 and September 2020, it lost 2,604,874 and it has been a downward trend.

Number of Internet Subscribers

The total number of Internet subscribers (GSM) currently stands at 152,220,957 million, while 9mobile can boost 4,778,159 million. 

Leadership 

9mobile has two executives, and the current Chief Executive Officer is Juergen Peschel. He assumed the role in March 2021. He replaced Alan Sinfield who left the CEO position less than one year after he took over from Stephane Beuvelet.

From the information available on his LinkedIn, Juergen Peschel has experience with a track record as a senior international C-level and board member within the Digital Transformation & Telecommunications industry, incl., key CxO and supervisory board positions with expertise in a vast variety of industry verticals and markets.

However, the current leadership at the company must have a deep sense of introspection and ask tough questions, especially why 9mobile keeps losing customers. 

Quality of Service

Quality of service (QoS) is the collective effect of service performance that determines the degree of satisfaction of a user of the service, indicating the performance of a network and the degree to which the network conforms to the stipulated norms.

It is one of the significant factors that will determine if any telecom service provider acquires more customers or not. The more the quality of service at a telco improves, the more it becomes attractive to subscribers. 

According to the NCC’s Quality of Service Report that covered KPIs in July 2020, 9Mobile failed to meet the industry’s key performance indicators (KPI) in some of the states in the country. 

The NCC key performance indicators consist of the rate of dropped calls, call setup success rate, standalone dedicated control channel congestion rate, and traffic control channel congestion rate.

According to the regulator, the QoS standards ensure that consumers continue to have access to high-quality telecommunications services by setting basic minimum quality levels for all operators. 

“These standards define the lower and upper bounds of acceptability of such issues as call setup success rate, call drop rate, handover success rate, call completion rates, etc., and commercial consumer issues such as access to customer care centers, billing integrity, and other characteristics that can be measured and improved.” 

Financials 

Checks by TechEconomy show that 9mobile has not released any financial reports. As of the time of filing this report, no such report was found online. 

Available reports indicate that 9mobile raised a total of $230 million in August 2019 from Africa Finance Corporation.

The loan was secured to repay debts, finance various operating costs, and increase infrastructural investments.

According to industry sources, 9mobile remains in debt. It owes Huawei (telecom equipment company) approximately $140 million and IHS, its passive infrastructure supplier, another $40 billion. IHS is one of the largest independent owners, operators, and developers of shared communications infrastructure in the world. 

9mobile has been losing customers, both Internet subscribers, and non-Internet subscribers.

5G Spectrum

5G network has been described as the force to drive emerging technologies and telecom operators across the country are beginning to deploy the needed infrastructure.

MTN Communications Nigeria Plc and Mafab Communications Limited have obtained the license in Nigeria to deploy 5G. MTN has launched in selected locations while Mafab hasn’t launched.

According to findings, 9mobile has not shown the temerity to bid for the 5G license (3.5GHz spectrum) from the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC). The second auction is already on the table.

Clearly, the body language from 9mobile shows that the mobile operator isn’t interested in investing in 5G technology, at least presently or the company does not have the financial muscle to bid for the 5G spectrum.

9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB)

9mobile is one of the licensed Payment Service Banks in the country (9PSB). PSBs are licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and permitted to use technology and agency banking to mobilize deposits and facilitate transfers from unbanked consumers in rural regions and any other location in Nigeria where they exist.

In fact, amongst all the telecom operators that tapped into the payment service business, 9mobile was the first to be licensed by the CBN in 2020.

Becoming a licensed Payment Service Bank costs a whopping sum of money. The minimum share capital for companies or investors seeking to be granted a PSB license is Five billion Naira (₦5,000,000,000.00)

This also includes a non-refundable application fee of N500,000 (five hundred thousand Naira only) in bank draft, payable to the CBN. And a non-refundable licensing fee of N2,000,000.00 (Two Million Naira Only) in bank draft payable to the CBN.

This whole scenario raises an eyebrow that 9mobile seems to be focusing more on the payment service business than improving overall telecom infrastructure to overturn its decreasing customer base.

This launch will provide significant opportunities for cities in Oyo State, that have not had sufficient broadband infrastructure and will improve the state’s competitiveness with high-speed, and affordable broadband internet from Tizeti.

Speaking on the launch, Kendall Ananyi, the chief executive officer of Tizeti, said that its 4G broadband internet will empower more Nigerians in Oyo State, stimulate economic activities and provide unlimited access to affordable and reliable broadband services as well as complement the initiatives of Oyo State Government’s efforts in driving eGovernment implementation, digital access and investment promotion.

“Launching our 4G LTE internet offering in Oyo State is a strategic decision after we saw what the Oyo State Governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde is doing through the ICT & eGovernance ministry. Oyo State is a leading state in digital technology infrastructure development and digital technology human capital development, as evidenced by the state’s achievement in the area of ICT infrastructure development, harmonized fiber infrastructure policy, and proposed zero tariffs on Right of Way costs.

“The governor’s efforts at implementing reforms in investment promotion, prioritizing Information Communication Technology (ICT)-compliant digital skills for civil servants and students as well as individuals in rural clusters, persons living with disabilities, and other disadvantaged groups are signposts of the state’s agenda in enabling digital inclusion.

When the efforts of the state are placed side-by-side with its large population of vibrant, young people, and its high number of higher institutions – a foundation for a robust and thriving digital ecosystem – it made sense to provide residents of Oyo State with our low-cost broadband service.

“This effort, we believe, will encourage employment, educational and economic opportunities in the state and help its government to quickly build digital leadership in Nigeria”, Ananyi said.

The company promised to expand to 10 new cities in Nigeria, building brand-new, solar-powered, 4G-capable towers in these cities and leveraging expansive fiber-networks built by some of its partners, including MainOne and Facebook, to bring millions of people online, and deliver the life-changing socio-economic opportunities that access to the Internet provides.

Tizeti is currently available in Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, and Edo States.

“Tizeti was built to tackle poor internet connectivity not only in Nigeria but on the continent as a whole, by developing a cost-effective solution from inception to delivery, for reliable and uncapped internet access for potentially millions of Africans”, says Ifeanyi Okonkwo, Tizeti’s chief operating officer, “The launch in Oyo State is a commitment to becoming the number one ISP in Africa. With this initial promo price of N2,222, this is the cheapest fixed internet package in Africa!

This will go a long way in driving the adoption of broadband internet in Oyo State, with huge implications for online learning, eCommerce, and entertainment, especially interactive games, video, and music consumption. Interested users in Oyo State can pre-sign up HERE as installations will commence in Ibadan on April 1st, 2022.

For many countries in Africa, there is still a huge digital divide. This boundary between connected and unconnected translates into clear consequences for employment, education, family and social life, and access to information.

According to the World Wide Web Foundation, ensuring fast internet in Africa will enable billions more to come online, and to take advantage of the life-changing socio-economic opportunities that access to the Internet provides.

Companies like Tizeti are playing a significant role in addressing the digital infrastructure deficits in Africa with innovative technology and capabilities, to improve development outcomes for millions of people.

Tizeti has 2.4 million unique users across Nigeria and Ghana with broadband services which include a new Skype-like personal and business enterprise communications service — WiFiCall.ng, and access to video streaming sites and services.