Interest in National Roaming is growing, as early-adopters show the way. Find out how the issue is maturing, as we report from West Africa Com and exciting initiatives from Gabon and from Ghanaian innovators, Esoko.
West Africa Com in June provided a terrific opportunity to discuss the latest issues surrounding ICT and mobile network developments in the region. It’s no surprise that one of the most hotly discussed topics is National Roaming. National Roaming provides a means to enable greater shared infrastructure, in turn, reducing the costs for MNOs and their partners to extend their footprint and bring services to new areas.
Of course, this demands that regulators play their part, so the ways in which this can be achieved are of great interest. One session, “Building Regulatory Frameworks to Accelerate Digital Transformation” tackled the topic head-on. Gabon was cited as an excellent example of a country in which National Roaming has been supported by key stakeholders, including the regulator and, as a result, has encouraged greater infrastructure sharing and has delivered extra coverage.
This is very promising. It shows how coordinated action can deliver the connectivity needed by citizens across the region – but it requires leadership and Gabon should be admired for the way in which it has enabled this to happen.
But, once delivered, what outcomes can be expected? Well, the good news is that connectivity provides a means to unlock so much more than personal voice services. In fact, as Esoko, a leading developer of innovative information distribution and capture solutions from Ghana, showed, connectivity can deliver significant benefits across key industry segments. Focusing on agriculture – a key industry in many rural (and hence remote) African communities, Esoko showed that, providing enriched information to farmers can improve income by as much as 10%.
That’s significant. And, this injection of funds brings new benefits. Not only can farmers invest more in their businesses, they have more to spend in the local economy. When MNOs deploy infrastructure, they will not consider such rewards, as they do not necessarily result in extra revenue from their mobile services, but regulators need to think about the big picture – which means the services that are enabled by mobile connectivity as well as the connectivity services.
So, a key takeaway from this valuable event is that mobile connectivity may be the tool to deliver services to remote users, but it’s only part of the story. It’s actually a key enabler for a wider range of services that bring new benefits to communities – and, to realise these benefits, the broader context must be considered. This means that regulators have to have a broad vision and must take a leadership role to bring stakeholders together.
That’s something WTL has been striving for. We’ve developed a simple, six-step plan that shows how coordinated, unified action between stakeholders can deliver enhanced coverage, based on National Roaming, spearheaded by the regulator.
