Dr Hammadoun Toure, secretary general, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has called on African leaders to embark on policies that encourage infrastructure sharing to reduce cost, of wireless broadband deployment.
Toure spoke in Accra, Ghana at a conference convened to address key policy issues and highlights efforts to expand telecommunications infrastructure, improve delivery of government services and support the growth of e-commerce.
His statement came on the heels of the rising worries over the high cost and low capacity of broadband infrastructure in West Africa.
The stakeholders at the conference organized by by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) in collaboration with the Ghanaian government included national telecommunication regulators, network operators, investment agencies and infrastructure providers.
According to the conference there is a large differential in residential broadband cost between Africa and the rest of the world, reaching more than 100 times in some cases compared to average for rest of the world.
According to figures provided by Intel Corporation cost of one mega bite per second (mbps) per month cost $3 Japan, $6 in Korea, while it’s $220 in Angola, $1300 in Cameroon, $160 in Ghana and $215 in Senegal.
For International bandwidth comparison Angolan rates are put at $7200, Cameroon, $2200, Ghana $6000 and Senegal $3750 representing over 100 times higher than rates in other developed countries such as North America and Europe.
In 2007 75 per cent of African countries have only 10 Mbps, while 45 per cent had 100Mbps.
Intel indicates that Africa stands as having the poorest performance, across all bandwidth performance measurements and is falling behind much faster than any other region.