John Dindlebeck is managing director of Gateway Communications Nigeria, an arm South Africa company Gateway Communications, the largest provider of pan-African network services, covering over 583 million people in over 40 countries.
He has a wealth of experience in the ICT sector and has at various times worked in different capacities both in Nigeria and abroad.
Dindlebeck spoke to hilary okeke on a wide range of issues.
Gateway Nigeria Take Over by Vodacom and Rebranding
Gateway in different regions has different legal entities. We are actually in Nigeria as Gateway Telecommunications Integrated Services; we re-incorporated ourselves as Gateway after Gateway bought GS Telecom in May 2007. Corporate Gateway was been bought over by Vodacom as at Dec 2008, and that means we are part of the global company and what we do here report into Vodacom operations now. But we are going to be retaining the Gateway brand and image, and still operate independently as Gateway Telecommunications. There are no plans for re-branding or changing our directions – Vodacom has no plans to change our brand at this time.
Choice of High-End Users for Internet Service Provisioning
It has been our target market; our corporate structure is geared towards reaching our market as it is. We go further to have a high quality Internet service for business-to-business, and it keeps us light on our feet, so we can be streamlined with the people that we have. This allows us to be very customer focused and ensure customer retention. We have grown organically, adding people and adding departments to be able to reach our markets. Maybe we will move further into the retail market as we roll out our broadband products but for now, we are content to serve the high-end users.
Erratic Internet Service on Networks Telecom Networks
I think it is a lot of different things. The issue of electric power and security, especially in Nigeria is crucial. The reason I say this is because a lot of the 3G services we use on our mobile devices depend on power and if there is any issue, it will cascade into the MSC and all the other pieces of the network that are involved and cause disruptions. The high cost of bandwidth is a major issue, which in turn introduces high bandwidth contention. It is a retail operation and you have a lot of small users who are dissatisfied. Some service providers have proven to be more reliable than others in delivering Internet services. I believe there are issues but with issues come opportunities.
Possibility of Broadband Nigeria
I think it is possible but will take some time. With time, there is going to be increased request for broadband services in offices. Getting 2-3mbps delivered to people’s residences like in Europe and the U.S. might take some time to happen here. Power still remains a problem. Installing fibre links to get them delivered door-to-door for broadband service is going to be the tough part. However, Nigeria has one of the best wireless infrastructures and that is a good thing.
Cheaper and More Efficient means of Delivering Internet Service to Low-End Users
That is a bit of a difficult question because we are not in that market. I think the most popular and efficient I have seen here is the CDMA Wireless, like Starcomms. I think it is good and quite reliable. It is wireless; in that way you can reach a lot of users without necessarily having to cable them up to their homes. We can of course, move forward with technology. It is about the cost effective way to reach the end users and if the infrastructure on ground is convenient for wireless like in this part of the world, then by all means go wireless; if it is cable, then go cable. But then, how much money are you going to have to invest to reach these low-end retail users? It is a critical thing to consider. For cable infrastructure, you would have to open up the ground and lay cables, and that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gateway’s Own Fibre Infrastructure
We do have plans for our fibre infrastructure but the details are not for public consumption at this time.
Points of Presence in Nigeria and overage of the Country
We have VSAT and services that we provide to our customers all over the country. We have to have a path (an access point) through which we can deliver service and bring it back into the fold of our backbone. We have some 1,500 VSATs all over. To have access to existing customers and prospective ones, we intend to increase our nationwide Points of Presence.
Gateway Nigeria
Apart from being an ISP, we also provide IT support services for several customers here; as well as VPN support services, MPLS, broadband wireless and backhaul services.
Fibre Cable Running Concurrently with VSAT
Absolutely, because we have some customers that we would want to move to the fibre infrastructure, and for some who have different locations that are spaced apart, we would use VSAT. Fibre is quite reliable, as you would likely believe, and a lot of our customers want both fibre and VSAT in operation. Fibre has an edge over VSAT, but there is a lot of liability and cost. There are plenty of applications that fibre can support but for VSAT, there are lots of drawbacks especially when it comes to complicated networks. As Nigeria grows and people and businesses begin to use high content low latency required applications such as Oracle or SAP; then there would be need for fibre as VSAT just cannot work as well. But for the Internet and VPN applications, VSAT is going to be around for some time.
Why Not the Fibre Road?
I think it is basically because of cost – fibre is very expensive to install. We have been a small company, but have grown organically over time based on investments and what we done within Nigeria. Companies that lay fibre are being supported by other businesses. You need a lot of resources to be able to build a fibre infrastructure. I think we could be quite proud to say we have grown organically; we now have a tremendous amount of expertise and offshore resources needed to build this infrastructure. It is something anyone should be proud of. As a matter of fact, we have tripled our growth in the past 2 years with the same number of people.
Implications of Vodacom’s Involvement
Well, they are going to bring some resources that Gateway did not have before, and we need to weigh those carefully and put them into the right market. There are going to be many changes for directions in growth as Gateway.
Nigeria’s Regulatory Environment in Nigeria
It is probably the best in Africa, and I think it rivals any environment in the western countries. The Nigerian Communications Commission from my experience tries to be fair to everyone. There are still areas where some dynamism is needed, but I am quite impressed with what I see here.
