"There are exciting opportunities for growth in sub-Saharan Africa with Kenya expanding in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and power utility market in addition to Nigeria venturing into the ISP space (WISP) market, with both countries experiencing good general growth," says Tony Rodrigues, regional sales manager at Cambium Networks.
Cambium Networks, formerly part of Motorola Solutions, celebrated its first year of existence in November 2012 with the company showing significant growth.
"A good percentage of our revenue is generated in South Africa with a fair share of revenue originating from sub-Saharan countries. We will continue to channel our efforts into growing our footprint into sub-Saharan Africa during 2013 with key focus areas including countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Angola and Mozambique," says Rodrigues.
"Our immediate aim is to build our reseller and channel network to increase availability of our products across the continent. The Cambium Networks point-to-point (PTP) and point-to-multi-point (PMP) solutions offer the bandwidth, flexibility, ease of installation and the cost effectiveness that will ensure high-speed access to users," adds Rodrigues.
South Africa's continued broadband adoption is mostly attributable to decreasing costs and readily availability access to wireless broadband services.
"There is however a growing need for capacity with ISPs having to contend with the ever-increasing needs of a burgeoning customer base. ISPs are certainly facing a unique set of challenges, having to navigate the realities of shrinking revenue while still addressing the growing capacity needs in their service offering," explains Rodrigues.
Affordable products in the space are key to the survival and growth of the market.
"Service providers will need to diversify their offering to provide products that are priced to suit the pocket of the client, whether they choose to purchase or use the equipment on an IT as a service (ITaaS) basis," concludes Rodrigues.
