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Africa’s ICT Infrastructure
highly competitive mobile markets, all other things being equal. For example, Ethiopia is a large country with a much higher population density than the Democratic Republic of Congo (81 people per km2), suggesting that it would have a higher level of coverage, but unlike the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia maintains a monopoly in the provision of telecommunications services. Largely on account of this, its mobile network covers only 11 percent of the population, less than onefifth of the regional average.
Broadband Access Network Infrastructure Many different technologies are used to provide customers with access to broadband Internet, and these technologies have evolved rapidly over time. In 2005, 40 percent of fixed Internet subscriptions in the OECD were dial-up, but by 2008 this figure was down to 10 percent. In some of the more advanced Internet markets, such as Korea, dial-up has practically disappeared (OECD 2009b). Broadband, which has largely replaced dial-up, was initially provided via copper-based telephone networks that were upgraded to carry broadband data14 or via upgraded cable television networks. More recently, companies around the world have begun investing in fiber-to-the-home access networks, which are capable of providing fast broadband services. In parallel with these fixed-line networks, wireless broadband networks have also been evolving and are expanding rapidly. Many different standards for this are seen, including the 3G family of mobile standards,15 WiMAX, and Long Term Evolution (LTE). No one standard has yet emerged as the global dominant technology. In OECD countries, 18 percent of mobile users have wireless broadband (3G) access (OECD 2009b), but in these countries, the primary means of broadband access remains fixed-line technologies such as DSL (digital subscriber line), cable, or fiber-to-the-home. In high-income countries, wireless broadband is currently seen as a complement to fixed-line access, rather than a substitute. The path of broadband market growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has been quite different. The lack of high-quality copper telephone lines and the virtual absence of cable television mean that wireline broadband access networks are very limited. Wireless technologies are therefore playing a much more significant role in the provision of broadband in the region than in other parts of the world. WiMAX was the first widely deployed wireless broadband Internet access network technology in Africa; Internet service providers (ISPs) and fixed-network operators typically adopted it as a fixed-access technology16