Weekly News – Research ICT Solutions

24 Jun 2022

Connectivity targets for 2030

by Steve Esselaar Taxation, Weekly News

The ITU released the Global Connectivity Report in early June 2022. The report lays out the connectivity targets for 2030. The report includes the usual internet penetration targets, but it also lays speed targets for fixed broadband and for schools. For schools, the minimum download speed per student is 50 kbit/s. The minimum speed for fixed broadband is 10 Mbit/s. These are ambitious targets because the majority of people and schools that are not connected will be in difficult to reach places. Two notable business opportunities are from Starlink and Intelsat. Starlink is planning on launching in Mozambique and Nigeria […]

18 Jun 2022

Digital services tax in Tanzania

by Steve Esselaar Taxation, Weekly News

After months of rumours, Tanzania has announced a digital services tax (DST). The Minister of Finance, in the 2022/23 budget speech, announced a 2% tax on the revenues of non-resident digital platforms. No cost-benefit analysis has been publicly released. Nor are there any details on when the DST would be imposed, how it would be collected and what penalties would be incurred if digital platforms did not comply. In addition to the DST, the Minister also announced the removal of the VAT exemption for smartphones because it “didn’t lead to reduction of prices to final consumers rather benefited traders”. Unfortunately, […]

10 Jun 2022

NGII: Select case studies

by Steve Esselaar Metaverse, Weekly News

Balancing Act has a great feature this week looking at the role of monopolies in the wholesale market and the impact this has on retail prices for several countries in Africa. We are going to build on that feature by providing some data from our Next Generation Internet Index (NGII). The principle behind the NGII is to measure a country’s progress towards the next generation Internet, or what is now commonly referred to as the metaverse. Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality will mean a more interactive and immersive experience. This requires high bandwidth and low latencies, but at […]

03 Jun 2022

Getting ready for the future: South Sudan

by Steve Esselaar Weekly News

Building new fibre routes is an obvious way to speed up access to the Internet. But the gains always seem incremental – nearly all countries have at least one international fibre cable and sometimes many more. South Sudan is a great illustration of the impact of fibre compared to other forms of connectivity like satellite and microwave. In 2020, Liquid and Muya built two fibre cables from Juba to Uganda. The table shows that the impact was dramatic: between Q1 of 2019 and Q1 of 2022, latencies were reduced by 70% and download speeds increased by 238%. Of course, connectivity […]

27 May 2022

Metaverse Readiness Index

by Steve Esselaar Metaverse, Weekly News

RIS has just launched the Metaverse Readiness Index (MRI)! Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) will require massive increases in computational efficiency and is collectively known as the metaverse. The metaverse requires fast, symmetrical broadband, low latency in a secure way and at an affordable price. We’re excited about the MRI because it measures the gap between the current state of Internet access and a metaverse-ready future. The MRI will be an average of the 4 sub-indices. However, countries are excluded if there is missing data in one of the 4 sub-indices. The MRI is designed to be aspirational, […]

20 May 2022

Australia’s readiness for the metaverse

by Steve Esselaar Digital economy, Regulation, Weekly News

RIS has been investigating what future networks are going to look like. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) will require massive increases in computational efficiency and is collectively known as the metaverse. An immersive, metaverse experience requires low latency. While download speeds are one component, latency is probably the most important. Generally, fixed fibre networks have far lower latencies than wireless. Except in Australia. Why? The biggest complaint from Australian telco’s is the role of the National Broadband Network (NBN). The wholesale market is dominated by the NBN. The process to build the NBN was initiated in 2009 and […]

11 Feb 2022

What happens when a government relies too much on a single source of taxation?

by Steve Esselaar Taxation, Weekly News

What happens when a government relies too much on a single source of taxation? The goal of taxation, especially for the ICT sector, is not revenue maximization, but to balance competing goals of access to the telecom services and at the same time generate sufficient revenue to pay for public goods like roads and health care. The excessive focus on excise duties as one of the main mechanisms to get tax revenue from the sector means that usage is penalized by driving up prices and lowering affordability. This also disproportionately targets the poor. Figure 1 shows how Uganda has taken […]

04 Feb 2022

What happens when you raise taxes on mobile money? The case of Tanzania.

by Steve Esselaar Weekly News

The focus this week is on the impact of tax increases on usage in the ICT sector. Tanzania offers a wonderful opportunity to see exactly how consumers react when the government decides to increases taxes. On the 30th of June 2021, the Government of Tanzania introduced new mobile money levies. The definition of mobile money includes the transfer of mobile money to another account (both bank and mobile money accounts) as well as money transferred using a bank’s mobile phone application but does not include bank to bank transfers. Initially, the electronic mobile money levies ranged from 10 to 10,000 […]

22 Jan 2022

Upgrade of the ICT Evidence Portal

by Steve Esselaar Weekly News

The newsletter this week is on our recently upgraded ICT Evidence Portal and especially the Tax Impact Calculator. We’re really excited about the ICT Evidence Portal because it gives key information about the telecom sector in Africa quickly and accurately. Regulators can easily benchmark their country against any other country on the continent. Operators can see how they compare against competitors. Any stakeholder can see what the impact of an increase or decrease in excise duties is going to have on tax revenue and the broader economy. There are four tabs within the portal: African Ranks – Ranks each country […]

14 Jan 2022

Quality of service rankings

by Steve Esselaar Weekly News

This week’s newsletter looks at the Quality of Service (QoS) rankings released by MyBroadband in South Africa. Download, upload and latency measurements are collected using MyBroadband’s Android Speed App. The methodology has its limitations: measurements are limited to Android users; people that are interested enough in QoS to download the Android app and the cost of access is not a factor in the analysis. Nevertheless, the data provides interesting insights into the status of broadband in South Africa. MTN is the best network in the country by quite a margin, with an average download speed of nearly 75 Mbps compared […]