The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently was involved in talks with SpaceX, an American company owned by Elon Musk who also runs the Starlink company. It seemed they reached an agreement with the NCC to start providing internet services to Nigerians through their over 4400 satellites orbiting the earth at low orbit.
“Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access.” says wiki. The satellite hardware is built at its Richmond facility before being shot up to space. SpaceX initially had sent two satellites in February 2018 then added 60 more in May 2019 and plans to make a total of 4408 constellations by early 2022. This whole project was estimated to cost $10 billion.
Currently, the project is in a beta phase – that is, it is not accessible to everybody. The cost incurred by the current beta subscriber is NGN190,000 ($499) for the starter’s kit which included hardware such as satellite dish, router etc. However, the subscription plan costs NGN38,000 ($100) per month.
Most internet service plans in Nigeria are so broken down such that hourly, daily, weekly etc rates are very welcome by most customers who do not see internet service as a cost to be budgeted for per month. Also this set of people earn an average of NGN30,000 per month which happens to be the minimum wage in Nigeria. The entry of starlink without provisions for this group of customers may bring it to losing out on the value they could add. However, the biggest set of customers coming for this are the various businesses and offices who’ve developed a detest for the telecommunication companies who are not reliable with their internet availability and speed. Also, the modern homes whose TV runs internet visuals using Netflix and YouTube and maybe businesses and companies running in rural areas that can’t get a good grasp of the local telecommunication network waves would also see this as good value to behold.
Various internet service providers have tried causing a disruption in how internet services would be provided in Nigeria, we’ve had TSTV who also was going to use the satellite dish and a router-decoder hardware to receive waves for both the TV and internet service. Little is currently known about the implementation of the project as its major roadblock was of regulations. Also, Tizeti by Facebook launched in 2017, however the going seems not to be good as low quality service complaints flood various internet forums about their internet service provision.
As always, time will tell if this would be the new way to go on internet service provision in Nigeria. Nigerians sure will always keep their fingers crossed, it’s the default mode.
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