Kyle Whitehill, CEO at London-based speciality satellite operator Avanti Communications, sees Africa becoming the company’s majority revenue source within two-to-three years. Avanti operates Ka-band services over Africa and the wider region.

Whitehill, speaking to Space in Africa, said that the company’s African revenues amount to about 35 per cent of the total, and Africa as a target corresponds to 75 per cent of its network.

He added that the vast majority of the African continent currently has no connectivity whether making voice calls of accessing data. Whitehill said this depressing picture was improving thanks to work done by cellular players such as Orange, MTN, Airtel and Globacom.

Avanti has specific targeted projects in key African countries. For example, it is building a new satellite gateway in Senegal which will come on stream during Q1 2023 and when completed will open up the rest of the adjacent region including Côte D’Ivoire, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Whitehill suggested that Elon Musk’s Starlink service‘s commercial model was unlikely to gain consumer acceptance in Africa and would , in his view, leave a gap for Avanti that it was happy to fill.

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Categories: Articles, Satellite

Tags: africa, avanti, Ka-band