AfricaCom, Cape Town, 14 November 2018 – WTL today announced that it has partnered with eWATERpay to include the provision of water into its multi-award–winning Vivada Rural Infrastructure Ecosystem.
The Vivada system from WTL has been deployed across Africa winning multiple awards in the process, including ‘Best Connectivity Solution for Africa’ at the 2016 AfricaCom awards.
As well as providing voice and data in rural and semi-urban areas, Vivada also generates solar power that can be connected to a mini-grid to provide power to homes and businesses living off-grid or in areas with unreliable grid supplies.
The provision of metered water using eWATERpay’s award-winning business model has now been incorporated into Vivada following demand from a number of organisations active in rural Africa.
eWATERpay will extend the water supply to villages and install taps. Its technology allows people to pre-pay for water using cash or mobile money, made possible by WTL’s Vivada wifi and GSM network. Water credit can also be purchased and shared by government (to schools and health clinics) or urban diaspora (to family).
eWATERpay also provides water authorities with a digital dashboard that captures and processes real-time data on litres of water sold, revenue collected, number of users at each water point, and any detected leaks or malfunctions in the water system.
Alex Burton eWaterpay’s CEO said: This is a very exciting relationship with WTL but most importantly it offers transformation to rural communities by providing a one stop utility service that is sustainable and robust. We are very much looking forward to seeing Vivada being deployed in more rural communities across Africa.
Leigh Smith, MD of WTL, said Our Vivada system was originally developed to provide voice and data. However, in many areas we are the only infrastructure company and so people continually ask us to provide other services. We are delighted to now be able to add the supply of water to our portfolio as we know from first hand experience that demand is extremely high.
WTL continues to champion the National Roaming model across Africa to increase coverage, improve service levels and encourage competition.
National Roaming has two components:
- Building new shared networks in rural areas where there is little or no coverage at the moment. These would be built by a neutral service provider and used by existing operators. Allocating USF money to the CAPEX cost of such networks would reduce the risk.
- Enabling people to use the network of other service providers where their own service provider does not have a network or has limited network coverage. In effect, operators share their infrastructure thus eliminating the need to lay duplicate infrastructures in areas where this is not commercially feasible.
With infrastructure sharing now being considered across the continent, WTL firmly believes that the removal of the CAPEX cost of building a rural network will encourage previously reluctant operators to start offering services in these areas.
WTL is already working with MNOs and wholesale operators across Africa to build rural networks, with power and water provided as appropriate.
About eWATERpay
eWATERpay won the 2018 Global Mobile Award for ‘Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN SDGs’ at the GSMA Mobile World Congress and was highly commended at the Financial Times/International Finance Corporation Transformational Business of the Year awards.
About WTL’s Vivada Rural Infrastructure Ecosystem
Over the past three years, Vivada has been improved and enhanced in a multitude of ways, most notably by being adapted so that wholesale carriers can build low CAPEX, low-CAPEX networks in rural areas for use by multiple operators.
Vivada networks support all types of pre and post-paid customers with varying telecoms budgets including GSM for every type of handset; wifi connectivity for smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs – and connectivity to cybercafes and hotspot call cabins.
Vivada includes a micro GSM and/or LTE base station, wifi routers, backhaul optimisation, billing and provisioning software, VoIP compression switches and SMS servers. The entire system runs on less than 200W which can be supplied by solar with battery back-up.
Vivada provides both electricity and water to rural communities.
About WTL
Headquartered in Belgium with offices in Nigeria, Brazil and the UK, WTL helps operators in emerging markets to deploy cost-effective, reliable voice and data networks for both rural and urban environments.
WTL has deployments in more than 30 countries in Africa with a well-deserved reputation for excellent service, reliable products and an expert team with extensive experience in Africa.
WTL’s innovative, practical and cost-effective portfolio includes its:
- Award-winning range of high capacity VoIP and hybrid VoIP/TDM switches which have been specifically designed to replace the huge, expensive, maintenance-heavy switches that have traditionally been used to transfer VoIP traffic onto other networks.
- Vivada Rural Infrastructure Ecosystem.
- Signalling gateways and pre-paid applications for emerging carriers and telecom service operators.
For more information visit www.wtl.be or contact WTL’s PR rep on +44 7946 342 903, skype: bridgetfishleigh or bridget@telecomsprafrica.com
