By: Dwight Links
Twoobii-OneWeb, a Eutelsat OneWeb high speed Low Earth Orbit satellite service, was launched in Windhoek last week to improve nationwide internet access.
Namibian-based internet service provision companies Q-Kon, Echo Namibia and Oblixx Communications Networks collaborated on the launch of the new service.
According to Riaan Grobler from Echo Namibia, it will provide an internet speed of up to 100 megabytes, comparable only to fibre internet services.
“This can be done anywhere in Namibia. This will also be accessible to rural communities in the country,” shared Grobler.
According to the partners, this service is specifically meant for the African continent.
Q-Kon acts as the engineering enterprise rolling out the service through Echo Namibia and Oblixx. Grobler indicated that since the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) approved their application, they have successfully installed 30 sites across the country.
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are infrastructure that the likes of Starlink has been using. In the technical aspects of this specific internet coverage, Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and LEO satellites are preferred over the further away geostationary satellites, which are only fixed to cover a single geographic territory.
LEO and MEO satellites are most often launched as constellations – a cluster to connect for service provision – and are closer to the Earth than geostationary satellites. All three move with the Earth’s rotation, with the aims of reducing latency and power requirements and costs.
Latency is whether the internet speed slows down or is maintained at a constant, reliable speed.
Q-Kon founder Dawie de Wet indicated that the biggest question technology pioneers have to answer is how to deliver the technology to a market.
“Technology by itself is meaningless, the goal is to harness it to open new markets. Also to improve quality of life and to uplift society,” De Wet stressed.
De Wet noted that since they began their process to bring LEO internet technology to Namibia in 2023, they have not been the only ones pursuing such a project.
“There are currently 45 Low Earth Orbit constellation projects open for Africa. This means a massive industry is on its way, and if you count space observation, besides internet service provision, this number jumps to a massive 400 low earth orbit projects,” expanded De Wet.
In terms of the architecture the satellite technology runs on, De Wet indicated that OneWeb runs on Nokia cellular architecture placed into LEO satellites for the internet provision aspect. According to him, these have been part of our daily lives ever since the first mobile communications infrastructure and technology came about more than 20 years ago.
“In a way, the technology is new but old. It is a level of technology that has found a platform, a new reach with new applications,” he added.
SIMULATING SCENARIOS
De Wet indicated that the partners ran simulations on the potential for the LEO internet technology to have a better impact on the Namibian market.
“This simulation looked at three scenarios: offshore or offsite model, and a model of what happens if an operator ran a distribution network, against a scenario of global operators that were forced to open a local office,” he explained.
He noted that they ran their simulation, added market dynamics, provided support to it and gauged predictions.
“Over a five to ten-year period, the market stagnates at about a 100 000 terminals, because then you have cherry-picked to service everyone with a credit card, and everyone that makes noise for coverage,” De Wet added.
De Wet indicated that the simulation of a distribution network model would noticeably impact everyday life.
“You then reach levels of 575 000 to 2 million terminals, where you start uplifting indirect challenges that everyday Namibians experience. Paying for calls and internet services, and more,” he explained.
The service has been confirmed to be active already and includes infrastructure that will be able to connect to it directly.
