So they own about forty three per cent of Accelon. Another 43 per cent is owned by IDC. The IDC, (Industrial Development Corporation) of South Africa is a venture funding company set up initially by the South African government but now it actually runs business on its own. Its tilt is towards financing Pan-African countries so, its scope spreads well beyond South Africa . Accelon offers its services in partnership with SES Global, the world leader in satellite communications, and was conceived in 2002 by Africa Venture Partners (AVP), a South African based investment and strategic management firm. Other investors in the company include SES ASTRA, an SES Global company, and the IDC of South Africa.

In 2003, Accelon achieved the distinction of the largest IT and Telecommunication sector start-up in Africa and also ranked among the largest startups in the sector globally in 2003.
Accelon currently offers services across West Africa with operations in Nigeria and Ghana and a small corporate office in South Africa. Accelon is currently active in seven countries and aims to extend its services to cover up to 10 selected countries in Africa by 2007.

After we came up, we ran a pilot for about two months and then started commercial services in May. Accelon's focus really is toward business sector, so you will notice that most of our solutions are geared towards serving business organizations either enterprise, large corporate or small and medium scale enterprise that are really more of the Internet Access types.

Our service of course is two-way being that it uses data on the VSAT and uses the network both the hub, which we have here, the satellite as well as the VSAT receptive networks through which businesses are able to conduct their operations; like exchanging data and voice as well within the network. Accelon decided to come into this market based on the need that was identified by the business within West Africa.

So even though we have what we call a small corporate office, investor relation office, which is where the chairman sits in South Africa, Nigeria is actually the operational head office of Accelon. Today, we have well over a thousand active locations spread across Nigeria and the rest of West Africa, about 90per cent of those are here in Nigeria, the balance may be concentrated as a 150 or so in Ghana and then we are beginning now to expand into sites in about seven countries. We are going to take that to ten within the next quarter that we are approaching now and actually start to establish underground operations in some of these markets.

Services

We operate KU- band based on knowledge of the region and the economies in which it is operated; obviously there is a price difference between KU-band and C-band services. One of the reasons we are comfortable about choosing KU-band is that our technical partners, Comsys UK (Communication Systems), the largest supplier on VSAT products world wide, were able to convince us that they have developed business grade KU-band solutions.

Why do I emphasize business grade, because we are all very familiar with the fact that one of the things that has helped the image of KU-band the most in this market is DStv and you know what happens when it rains and you are watching your DStv.

It means that when the hub starts to notice degradation in quality of signal from the satellite, it signals to the satellite to confirm that there is in fact some interference, and between the satellite and the hub, there is a step up of power, until the signal is able to overcome whatever the distorting image is. In most cases, it is raindrops falling through and distorting the wave.

This characteristic on the hub has meant that previously, rain would have caused degradation in the quality of service or availability of service out rightly for most of our customers; we have overcome this. I must say to you that coming into the market with that took a bit of convincing.

Some of them took a bet on us and I remember MBC said go and put up in Bonny and some others said Warri, Aba , Oniitsha, etc. They told us to specifically put it up in the rain belt areas to see, and today, we are solidly in the banking sector. We serve Platinum - Habib Bank, FCMB, Oceanic bank, Intercontinental bank, Gateway Bank before they merged, etc. We have been able to convince the Nigerian business community enterprise and at the SME level, that our KU-band offering is business grade.

However, on the insistence of some of the higher- ends corporate on the C-band as a policy, we acquired as of last year and deployed at the beginning of this year, a C- band hub.

customer in and since we are not here for one year or two years, we are here for long term play, we believe that if our customers stay long enough on our network, we will reap the returns of the relationship in a commercial sense of it. Equipment We are beginning to look in that direction. And obviously the challenge is there. For SOHO, aside cost of entry.

I think re-occurrence is a challenge as well, but one actually for VSAT. Given the stuff of business that VSAT is, the equipment tends to be a bit of a daunting hurdle for most SOHOs to get over and we have done a number of things.

We have gone into arrangement with one or two banks, to provide a lease-type arrangement to the customer, whereby the customer does not feel the cost of the equipment at one go but is to spread through a number of years up to two to three and is paid as rental, so it is called 'A lease- to-own' type of arrangement.

You will pay the lease up to a point where it is essentially depreciated on cost of the equipment and subsequently you can take an option to acquire it for a nominal fee and then it becomes yours. Otherwise you can say that you have no use for all these contraptions in your house. So beyond that, we are also looking at alternative technology that would allow SOHO to participate in our services.

Regulation

Under the leadership of Engineer Ernest Ndukwe, the regulatory environment in Nigeria continues to be a pace setter on the continent. It is amazing. We found the last one and a half years, rewarding as a company in terms operations, our relationship with the regulator is very positive.

Our relationship with the authorities at the ports in terms of bringing in our materials to our business is very cordial. The relationship with the government in general and the environment in which we operate is very strong and positive. So I think the regulatory environment in Nigeria is very positive, it is liberal enough to allow everyone to bring their offering to the table.

Unified License and professionalism Even the licensing is professionalism. One of the things I believe continues to distinguish the Nigerian regulatory environment as well is that, it is run by technically competent people who know the direction in which the market is going.

Telecoms have evolved to a point where regulation of technology is becoming obsolete and archaic because there is a convergence both in terms of platforms and in terms of the technology that this platform delivers. What you do when you continue to regulate technology is you continue to put impediments in the way of the service providers to deliver sound quality service to the customer.

Accelon and Nigerian Market

We don't offer services in South Africa because the South African market is still very highly regulated now and the operators are limited and restricted to I believe, one government and one fully private sector operator.

There was an announcement this year to that effect that the market would be further de-regulated. So our major market of operation so far has been Nigeria and other West African countries, Mali, Togo, Senegal, Benin-Republic, etc.

We have added a significant number of products to our line-up in response as well to the very buoyant and evolving nature of Nigerian market particularly in the corporate sector. It is amazing how quickly innovation happen in that sector of business and people start to ask for new products. So in the last six months, we created a hosting and co-location business, launched a second hub; the C- band hub, we started to sell what we call 'bandwidth pool services' which allows for self management of bandwidth allocated to a particular customer.