Thanks for your insight, Mark. Especially considering that you handled my somewhat childish and incoherent, yet complete and utter rampage last night or this morning as well as my barrage of insults towards your company and other ISPs in Ghana.

So, pardon my frustrations for the time being. I can defiantly hang on long enough for the ISP market in Ghana to mature. Although every now and then I may throw a tantrum.

- Vodafone (previously Ghana Telecom) now has a monopoly on all fibre supplied internet (SAT-3) coming into the country and the wholesale price that this data costs an ISP is around $8,000/2mb/month. This is the key problem with pricing in the country. It also allows Vodafone to charge much less for it's own services thus strangling the other ISPs.

- DSL is the best way to deliver service, yet another monopoly exists here where Vodafone won't allow other ISPs (with the exception of Internet Ghana that got in early and quick) the ability to deliver over their copper network. Thus all ISPs are forced to use comparatively expensive radio links.

- Bandwidth is the biggest cost to any ISP and since this is billed by the suppliers in dollars, the ISPs need to quote in dollars. Thus any depreciation in the cedi has to be passed to the consumer as there are no margins for the ISPs to absorb this cost. The cedi and dollar were 1:1 just 6 months ago. Since then the cedi lost 50% of it's value and is at 1:1.5. The ISPs can't absorb that.

- New fiber is coming to ghana over the next twelve months that will break the monopoly and drop prices significantly through competition. By perhaps as much as 60%. Most ISPs wont' pass all of that along, as they need to improve their margins (yes, they really do) but a good portion of it can be passed along and customers should expect and demand it.

- Other good ISPs that exist are Teledata and K-NET and Africa Online.

- Upfront fees (in our case) cover the radio equipment charges that we incurr by buying and shipping in from overseas (Germany). The canopy equipment from motorola is a reliable product, but not cheap (and we also buy in dollars). We don't make margins on that, but rather than pass the entire cost on to the customer of the purchase and install ($500) we offer a deferred payment plan to help people spread payments. We'll make that more clear.

- I agree with you that Internet service in Ghana is still way too expensive and thus businesses and individuals can only afford small amounts of bandwidth and thus it's maddeningly slow. If you looked at it from the ISPs perspective, you'd probably find local ghana businesses that are struggling to deliver quality products at affordable prices and still keep a small margin to grow the business. Government has a role to play in regulating the monopolies that provide us with bandwidth, and there has been several attempts to get them to act, but as yet, SAT-3 remains monopolistic with outrageously high prices.

- Sorry you're frustrated! But hang on, I believe we'll have a different story to tell in 18 months when three new fibres entering ghana will introduce more competitive pricing.

Mark (BusyInternet)

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