Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet) was founded in 2013 to focus on and improve the backbone network and internet infrastructure of Botswana. More than ten years later and the organisation has laid more than 12,400km of fibre, connecting 80% of the population.
BW TechZone spoke to Mpho Koolese, the Acting CEO of BoFiNet, to expound more on the organisation's work so far. In the wide-ranging conversation, Koolese touches on BoFiNet's relationship with Starlink, positioning Botswana as a regional internet hub, the state of fibre connectivity in Botswana, and much more!
BoFiNet was created to drive Botswana’s broadband ambitions. A decade later, what would you say is your biggest win as an organisation?
In terms of the biggest win, when we started, we had 6000km of fibre. 10 years later, we have doubled that to about 12,400km, and we have connected 223 villages with high-speed internet out of a total of 503 gazetted villages.
In Botswana, gazetted villages refer to any settlement with a population of more than 500 people. So, we’ve connected almost half of all the gazetted villages in the country, which is quite a milestone. In terms of population coverage, I would say we’re at more than 80% coverage.
We predict that the rest of the villages are almost 2000km of fibre. Once we’ve covered that 2000km, we will have covered the entire country. Some of the villages that aren’t connected with fibre are connected with wireless, which we call radio.
In partnership with the state presidency, we have connected 1138 premises with free WiFi internet. We’ve connected the Kgotlas, schools and health facilities. So, in terms of the coverage, every month we have provided terabytes of free internet downloads to the population, and that’s an achievement.
Last year, we were rated #2 in Africa in terms of internet speed. On average, the internet download speed in Botswana is about 43 Mbps, and that gave us the #2 position. The fastest is South Africa because it’s one of the biggest economies in Africa, and then the third is Mauritius. But Mauritius is an island. I, personally, do not want us to rate ourselves with Mauritius because the land mass is about 120km by 80km. Compared to Botswana, which is about 1300km by 800km.
We pride ourselves on the digital transformation that the government is trying to do because we can say we are digitally connected, looking at what BoFiNet has done over the past 10 years.
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| To provide Batswana seamless access to content, BoFiNet has invested in infrastructure spanning across five countries (Source: BoFiNet) |
What have been the most prominent challenges?
Our biggest challenge is operational expenditure. Botswana is sparsely populated, and we need to connect every Motswana wherever they are by putting infrastructure there, which is quite expensive. As such, our OPEX is quite high and our margins are very low. Most of the time, we request government assistance so that everyone can access the same services all over the country.
How is BoFiNet positioning itself in a rapidly changing telecoms landscape, especially with the rise of satellite internet players like Starlink?
Starlink is complementary to our services. Most people might think that they’re a competitor, but there are areas which we can’t reach, especially commercial farms, and hospitality areas in the swamps, for example. It’s very difficult to reach those areas using our normal technologies. Starlink comes in handy because they don’t need masts or to dig to connect those areas. As such, we are seeing them as a complementary service.
They can’t replace whatever technologies we have, but they are complementing them. There are opportunities for us to work with them.
When satellite service fails, we can provide redundant services to them. Obviously, they came in heavy with their advertising, and we have seen saturation, especially in Gaborone. They had stopped selling gadgets because they had reached capacity, and we then had to come up with measures to assist them.
So in short, they are not a competitor to us as a wholesaler, but they are a competitor to our retailers, and we have to work with our retailers to assist them in getting market share, especially within the big villages, towns and cities.
BoFiNet has invested heavily in national and cross-border fibre. Are these assets being fully utilised — and if not, what’s standing in the way?
The assets are being fully utilised.
This is how we do things: we need to have redundant links to the outside because we are a landlocked country, and being landlocked means we have to traverse through other countries. One of the biggest links that we have is going through South Africa because there are a lot of hyperscalers such as Google and Facebook. We are currently building our data centre to try to get those hyperscalers here, such that we do not rely much on going through South Africa.
The way fibre works is that you light a channel within the cable. In layman's terms, fibre has unlimited capacity, but what you use is determined by the technology that you use. What we have used is fully utilised, and if we need to increase, then we light up another channel.
It’s not like we can say we have abandoned capacity that we’re not using – no. We are using what we have equipped, because the fibre technology itself has unlimited capacity. It is dependent on what you carry at that point in time. We have fibre connections to all our neighbouring countries.
What we are working on as a strategy is to route internet connections to all our neighbours, because we’re in the centre of Southern Africa. If you are sending an email from Zambia to Namibia, we are the shortest route. If you’re sending an email or making a call to Zimbabwe from South Africa, we’re the shortest route. That is the strategy that we’re working on, to ensure that we’re the shortest route to all our neighbours.
Routing traffic will mean that we become a hub of internet connectivity and voice connectivity in Southern Africa. With the data centre that we are currently building, we are putting up an Internet Exchange Point where all the routing of the internet will be anchored in Botswana.
You’ve spoken about Botswana becoming a regional data hub. What concrete steps are you taking to attract hyperscalers and big cloud players to host here?
The only piece to the puzzle has been the data centre. You can’t host hyperscalers if you don’t have a data centre that has been accredited. We have built a 1000 square meter data centre, called Digital Delta, and we are currently at the tail end of certification from Uptime Institute, an American accreditation centre that accredits data centres.
There are 4 scales: Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV. We will be certifying our data centre for Tier III. This Tier is in the upper scale in terms of availability of data centres, with the last scale being Tier IV. If you look at the allowed unavailability time, a Tier III data centre can only fail for 93 minutes in a year, cumulatively. Tier IV, I think, is in the range of about 34 minutes. If we successfully certify for Tier III, we can host all these hyperscalers because they need a minimum of Tier III.
We are currently in talks with Google, who are supposed to put up a rack with our data centre. We already have caches for companies like Agami and Facebook, so we’ll be taking them to the data centre. That was the last piece of the puzzle to get us going with the hyperscalers.
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| By hosting a Regional Internet Exchange Point in Botswana, BoFiNet would enable multiple entry connectivity to neighbouring countries, providing redundancies and high availability of services and establishing Botswana as a regional internet hub. (Source:BoFiNet) |
ISPs often blame BoFiNet for the high cost of bandwidth. What is BoFiNet doing enough to make internet access affordable for the average Motswana?
I would say that’s a myth. Botswana has one of the lowest costs of bandwidth in Africa, and it has been made the lower by introducing BoFiNet. What we do is, as a wholesaler, we buy capacity in bulk so that we reduce the margins and take them to the ISPs. To call from Ramatlabama to Charles Hill costs P1 per minute. You can’t get that anywhere in Africa, except in South Africa, which has got big infrastructure. I would say we are doing fine as a country in terms of bandwidth prices.
As Batswana, we don’t appreciate what is outside of Botswana. If we could go to neighbouring countries and check the prices of services, we’d be shocked. I can rest assured that Botswana has the lowest prices for internet and voice calling. Go to BOCRA and ask what the price of calling per minute and internet per minute is in Zimbabwe. You will be shocked. We have this narrative that the costs of services are quite high here, but they’re not.
How do you respond to critics who argue that BoFiNet’s wholesale-only model creates inefficiencies or limits innovation in the retail space?
BoFiNet is the only operator in the country that has been given a wholesale license and not a retail license. We have organisations such as BTC, Orange, Mascom, Liquid and Abari, who are doing wholesale and retail. So, we are competing with organisations that have got two licenses while we’ve got one.
For example, let’s look at a company like Abari, which is not getting services from BoFiNet. They’re self-providing. They’re connecting themselves to other operators in South Africa, bypassing BoFiNet. We are not the only service provider in the country that provides services to everyone. There are 5 of us. So, that narrative is wrong because we’re competing with organisations that provide services to wholesale customers and retail customers.
We’re barred from retail. If we had a retail license to operate as an ISP, we’d change the narrative overnight. We’re limited to provide wholesale services to those that would want to retail on a lower scale in terms of costs. That’s where we are.
What role will BoFiNet play in Botswana’s 5G rollout? Are you collaborating with telcos or charting an independent course?
We provide the mobile operators with the capacity to be able to run their 5G services. We have refurbished our network to be 5G ready in terms of transport and services to mobiles. A 5G mobile station will require an excess of 2 gigabits of bandwidth, and we can provide 10 gigabits. So, in terms of the 5G rollout, we’re more than ready to provide the mobile operators with the bandwidth that they require.
AI and edge computing are transforming networks globally. Is BoFiNet actively exploring these technologies?
We are part of a team from our ministry that is looking at AI policy for the rollout of AI. AI is going to transform everything. With our data centre, we’ll be able to host everything that AI requires. Not only AI, but also Internet-of-Things (IoT).
In-house, we’re employing AI tools to look at the optimisation of our network infrastructure, our Network Operations Centre, and Security Operations Centre, and ensuring that we do things efficiently. Our equipment that’s on masts can also be affected by wasps or bees. Every now and then, we need to have a light on the tower for aviation, and most of the time, we have to send engineers to climb to the top of the towers to check if the lights are working, and all those things.
We are now going to be using AI and IoT to assist us in managing the towers, to see that birds haven't built nests on the tower, or that the paint hasn’t shifted or that the lights are all working, replacing our human resources that climb the towers with drones and such. That’s what AI would then assist us with, in terms of managing all those things.
In terms of phone calls, if you’ve got a fault, instead of dealing with a hundred phone calls coming in at once, we will be channelling them to an AI assistant to log your call and assist you. We are actively doing that.
BoFiNet is a state-owned entity. How do you balance commercial objectives with public service mandates, especially in rural connectivity?
Like I said, we rely on CapEx from the government, especially for rural connectivity. We are leaving no one behind. Think of the furthest place you’ve been to in Botswana. For example, there is a place called Gudigwa, and it’s the last village before you go into the Delta. Previously, there were limited services there. Gudigwa is now connected with fibre. If you go into Gudigwa, there will be areas where there’s a crossing for elephants. We have put our fibre in that very last place.
I would say that the government has done a lot in terms of making sure that most rural areas have got ICT infrastructure that’s similar to that in Gaborone. You can’t differentiate it. If we’re at the Kgotla, and I put on the internet speed check, I’m going to get the same result at that Kgotla that I would get in Gaborone. That’s how transformed we are as a country in terms of getting services to the most rural areas where most of us haven’t travelled, and ensuring that the government assists us in terms of getting services to the ordinary Motswana wherever they are.
When we make money in Gaborone, in terms of connecting everyone here, we take that money and subsidise the rural areas. That’s how we then compensate for those who are not able to afford some of these services.
BoFiNet is funded in part by public money. How do you ensure transparency and accountability to Batswana, especially when it comes to big-ticket infrastructure projects?
We are a government-funded organisation and we need to be transparent in what we do. On an annual basis, we publish our procurement plan in the media. We have our internal audit that checks that everything is being done well. We have external auditors who confirm that everything that we do is according to statute. We have our annual report that we publish on our website, for everyone to see how we’ve been performing.
Botswana Accountancy Oversight Authority, on an annual basis, comes here to value our books and make sure we are complying with public funds. BOCRA, on an annual basis, receives our financial results, then they take 1% as tax into the Universal Service and Access Fund. There are also whistle blowers. In terms of accountability, we are 100% accountable. You’ve never seen us in the newspapers, and you’ll never see us in the newspapers. We’ll never go there.
*Interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity