When the publicity about the impending arrival of undersea cables started gathering momentum, analysts predicted the death of satellite, arguing that no organisation would stick to it given its high costs of maintenance as opposed to fibre. But how wrong they were. Due to some of its inherent advantages over other technologies, and the recent two outages on the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable, satellite has managed to weather the storm.
“Satellite cannot die because of its ubiquitous nature. Once deployed, it  can serve any area. No other technology does that”, says Job Ndege, General Manager, Afsat Services Limited.

According  to Ndege, solutions like those offered by Afsat, which operates under the brand name iWayAfrica, are reliable and offer consistent service. For instance, a customer in Nairobi receives the same services as the one in Dakar. Compared to Fibre To The Home (FTTH), satellite is easy to deploy as no digging is required.

“By deploying satellite, you’ll be up and running in an hour or two. You can also reuse the capacity. You can share it over a large number of users because of the wide coverage it provides”, says Ndege.

Moving deeper into technology, satellite takes care of the backbone, backhaul and  last mile access unlike other technologies.  The iWay broadband, for instance, enables  customers to connect to the backbone, with only two points of failure-the customer premises and the Satellite Hub. On the other hand, cable cannot be deployed everywhere, thereby necessitating need for last mile solutions and usually a mixture of connections and operators are required for end to end connectivity.This causes many points of failure and leads to unreliability and inconsistency.

It is the uniqueness of iWayAfrica’s implementation of satellite technology  and customer centrility that has kept Afsat going in the face of stiff competition.

“The first value we have is the customer. All we do here at Afsat as a company or iWayAfrica as a brand, is to ensure that our products, our services are to the satisfaction of the customer. If you offer value for money to the customer, you will always stay ahead in the competition”, says  an upbeat Ndege.

But to succeed in this, the people designing products and services must have relevant technical skills. Not to be ignored is the constant customer feedback  which keeps the company abreast with various customer needs.

“Our service is designed in such a way that the customer gets consistent  broadband speeds, which is very unique in itself. At Afsat, what we promise is what we give. Giving customers value for their money is what keeps us going. Most providers don’t do that”, says Ndege.

Founded in 1992 with the initial vision of providing communication solutions within East Africa, the vision was extended in 2001 to cover the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Under the brand name iWayAfrica, Afsat currently provides two services. The first one is  packaged as fast, reliable, secure,highly efficient and cost-effective Internet access product, known as iWay Broadband. The second one is tailor -designed and highly available intracorporate connectivity solution that  is referred to as iWay Corporate networks.

But the company’s growth and stability did not come on a silver platter. When Afsat began expanding from East Africa to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, a huge capital outlay was required for building infrastructure. However, financiers were reluctant to fund projects in areas they still considered did not require broadband.  Through the skills of Afsat founders and support from Hughes who is one of the benefactors of VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal),  the company was able  to set up a service that could deliver broadband and any connectivity from Dakar, Senegal to Djibouti; from Cairo to Capetown any time and at any speed.

Still, challenges persisted in 2002 as the company was taking off.

“We were now looking for licences in countries where we were not present. We got licences in Uganda and Tanzania quickly in the mid-1990s but Kenya took us a while because Kenya was not liberalised at the time, with the defunct Kenya Posts &Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) as the sole operator”, recalls Ndege.
But out of sheer persistence, the company had already reached 28 countries in Africa and identified 30 partners. Thus began the company’s journey to broadband revolution.  Then in the years  2007 and 2008, there was a shortage of satellite capacity as competition with the broadcast and cellular world for capacity went a notch higher. Thanks to a favourable regulatory environment in Kenya, the company eventually got a license in Kenya.  Afsat now has subsidiaries  in Kenya,Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Nigeria and is present in 31 countries in Africa with a network of 40 distributors offering its service. Boasting over 7000 VSAT sites serving about 60,000 customers, the company has won various awards. In 2007, Afsat was rated the Best Company in the Developing world in terms of communications by the World Communications Awards (WCA) Council. Since 2007 Afsat has been declared the Largest VSAT Broadband Operator by Comsys. In 2008, 2009, and in April 2010 they were declared the Best VSAT Operator  and Best Skills Developer in Satellite Communications in Africa during the  Satcom Stars Awards. For the last three years, Afsat has changed shareholders two times. They were first acquired by Mweb Africa in 2007. In 2009, the company was acquired by Telkom South Africa .

“Those two acquisitions have  brought more products to Afsat’s portfolio. This pushed us to the verge of providing triple play. Once the Telkom acquisition is complete we want to be a one stop shop for ICT services. I urge our customers to look out for more”, concludes Ndege.