Publications
Partners
Johannesburg - The African continent will get a dedicated satellite for cellular backhaul and digital television from late 2010 when a R2.5bn project, funded mostly by African investors, is completed.
The project, called the New Dawn Joint Venture, will be 75% owned by global satellite giant Intelsat, and 25% by a local investor group. The investor group is led by former communications director-general turned businessman Andile Ngcaba's Convergence Partners, and Internet Solutions co-founder David Frankel's Altirah Capital.
Already 50% of the satellite's capacity has been sold to anchor customers including Vodacom International, Gateway Communications (which Vodacom is buying), Zain Nigeria and Gilat Satcom. The rest will be marketed to potential customers between now and the launch date.
Vice-president for business development at Intelsat Edward Berger said although he did not want to be drawn on the financial specifics of the deal, all parties, including the funders Nedbank and the Industrial Development Corporation, were "very comfortable" with the projected returns.
Convergence Partners' chairperson Andile Ngcaba said its model had been to build an African satellite with commercial returns.
The satellite is being built and should be completed by the last quarter of 2010. It would be launched that quarter and be in service by the first quarter of the following year, Berger said.
The launch destination is still unclear. Berger said negotiations were under way with the handful of experienced operators who had the skill to provide this service and an announcement would be made at a later stage.
Intelsat has been servicing Africa for 40 years and has 25 satellites that can see the continent (but are predominately focused on Europe). New Dawn would be a dedicated satellite which would service only the continent. Berger said Intelsat was probably best placed to launch an African satellite, given its knowledge and experience of the continent.
Intelsat has a network of 53 satellites and has been operating since 1964, then as a joint venture between governments and state telecommunications operators. It was privatised during that period.
The New Dawn satellite would have a technical life of 15 years, but Berger said Intelsat recently retired a 30 year-old satellite.
The project has been more than two years in the making and Berger said there had been a number of "twists and turns" along the way, commensurate with any complex project of this nature involving multiple time zones, funders, equity participants, legal firms and other players.
Ngcaba explained that New Dawn would be a "geostationary satellite" which orbits at just below 36 000km above the earth and appears stationary to the earth-based observer. Such satellites provide feeds for television and radio stations, as well as telephony and data networks.
The African market had a landmass larger than the USA, India, Argentina, China and Western Europe combined, he said.
It also had 339 million cellphone subscribers out of a population of one billion, with compounded annual growth rates of 50%. In addition, internet penetration is only 5% (or less then 1% in terms of broadband users). So there was a significant market it could provide backhaul to.
Convergence Partners also has an investment in undersea cable project Seacom, among other telecoms investments.
- Fin24.com
