Zambia is a landlocked country heavily reliant upon farming and mining. With a diverse geography, the country boasts mountains and hills as well as very flat expanses. Zambia has grown as a result of its copper mining industry, which for many years was its main export. However, since copper prices have slumped, Zambia has been forced to create a diversification programme to explore new means of revenue. This programme is focusing heavily on agriculture which currently provides more jobs than the mining industry. Other industries involved are tourism, gemstones mining and hydro power.
Low Internet Penetration
Zambia is a country determined to focus upon ICTs to help develop its digital economy. Though the country is landlocked, and this has presented it with a challenge in terms of access to submarine cables, it has secured some access through neighbouring countries. This has led to a reduction in fixed line prices. The Zambian government has started a Universal Access Fund and it is hoped that, by the end of 2017, the country will achieve 92 percent mobile coverage after the building of 1000 base stations. Currently, mobile penetration stands at 78 percent and Internet penetration at 18 percent.
Zambia’s programme of diversification could be helped enormously with satellite connectivity. At present, although mobile coverage is growing, fixed line penetration is not adequate to serve outlying areas where a great deal of the diversification process will take place in agriculture, tourism, gemstone mining and hydro power. VSAT networks can be deployed very quickly and easily, and can enable connectivity at every stage of the development of a business including transmission of large amounts of data and connection of remote sites to headquarters. For agriculture, a VSAT network can offer so much including monitoring of the weather, gaining information on agricultural practice and techniques, opening up farms to the global marketplace and much more.
BusinessCom Networks offers extensive solutions that can help Zambia to use connectivity in order to diversify its economy by gaining access to easy-to –deploy and cost effective solutions such as VoIP, WAN connectivity, dedicated bandwidth, hybrid services and Virtual Network Operator solutions. Communications form the backbone of any solid business. Not only this, BusinessCom Networks can provide Zambian rural communities with the communications that are so badly needed to enable them to participate in the digital world.
BusinessCom offers the following satellite internet services in Zambia:
- Broadband Internet access
- Toll quality VoIP and Videoconferencing with CIR
- Reliable SLA through FDMA and D-TDMA with 98% efficiency on payload
- Star, Mesh and hybrid Star/Mesh topology networks
- Full support of accelerated VPN, CITRIX, ERM and other business applications
- Highly secure operation with optional AES embedded encryption
- Global C-Band coverage and sub-Sahara Ku-Band
- Landing at top tier redundant IP facilities in Western Europe and United States
- Sentinel-based QoS, bandwidth management and optimization platform
