MTN's electricity-generating moves

Episode 238 August 22, 2024 00:37:20
MTN's electricity-generating moves
Techpoint Africa Podcast
MTN's electricity-generating moves

Aug 22 2024 | 00:37:20

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Hosted By

Chimgozirim Nwokoma Oluwanifemi Kolawole Bolu Abiodun

Show Notes

Today on the Techpoint Africa Podcast, our host is joined by Mojola Ola and Emmanuel Paul to discuss:

 

Subscribe to The Modern Workplace/, Equity Merchants/, Techpoint Digest/ and  Intelpoint's newsletter.

 

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro

03:26 - MTN Nigeria secures a permit to generate electricity

18:34 - MTN Group records $414.7 million loss

24:31 - Elon Musk Starlink's ground-breaking move in Nigeria

 

Useful links

MTN Nigeria secures a licence to generate electricity in Lagos

MTN Group records $414.7 million loss, its first loss in 8 years

Elon Musk Starlink's ground-breaking move in Nigeria

 

This episode was produced by Crystal-Agnes Joseph

 

Email us your feedback at podcast@techpoint.africa. Visit www.techpoint.africa/ for more stories.

Music - Beach by MBB -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEnQ8dHwDSk

 

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View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Inflation, just a word. But like yeast, it makes everything rise, rise so high even our savings can bite. From food to transportation to clothing to even rent, the recent basic income barely feels like it came. Our hard earned money failing to dance to the rhythm of inflation. We barely get through today, only to worry about tomorrow. Yet tomorrow carries so much hope on its shoulders. Hope amidst the fear of how it will turn out. But despite the gloom there, there is good news. We found the best way to save. With Jolof plus interest so high, 21% net, even inflation stands no chance. So today we breathe and choose to secure tomorrow. Today we save to beat inflation tomorrow with Jolof plus. Download the Jolof plus app on Google Play Store or Apple Store and earn up to 21% net on yours. [00:01:23] Speaker B: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Tech Point Africa podcast. I am Oluwani Pekola Ole, your regular host on this podcast. And today I have two esteemed guests in the studio with me to discuss the stories we have for you today. Actually, a lot of things happened in african tech this week, but decided to just talk about two popular entities and some moves they are making. First, let me introduce the esteemed guest in the studio this morning. No, sorry, whenever it is you're listening to this. The first person that we have today in this studio is a new face. So I tried to go with the new face first before the one, you know, and the voice, you know, probably have missed on this podcast. But with me in the studio today is Mujola. Olaevdeh is the CEO of Grid Crux Energy Solutions, and he will be joining us to provide experts opinion and insight on one of the stories that we have today. And probably all the stories because, you know, when you're experts in one, you know a lot about other things. Yes, thanks for joining us today. [00:02:37] Speaker C: Thank you very much for having me. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Yes. And also with us in the studio today is Emmanuel Paul. Do I need to introduce him? [00:02:46] Speaker D: Yes. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Okay. Let me introduce him so that I know. See, finish. Emmanuel Paul was the former host, remember? I, you know, I sent him away from this host position. Yes. So he's coming today as a guest and he said he's a researcher and I. Sorry, he's a researcher. Sorry, sorry. Sorry for the C. Finish. I'm not Emmanuel. You are welcome to the studio. [00:03:15] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:03:16] Speaker B: So he's going to provide this insight as a researcher and an analyst to the stories we are talking about today. Thank you, Mujola and Emmanuel, for joining me in the studio. And let's get straight into the story. [00:03:28] Speaker D: All right. [00:03:29] Speaker B: MTN is making big moves, and it recently got license from the Niger Electricity Regulatory Commission, NURQ, to generate 15.94 megawatt of electricity across fork power plants in Lagos State. Actually, for this window, it is not only MTN that got a license. Godin Penney also got a license, and that one even spans across a few southwestern states. But we want to focus on Mtn. The license is getting, for one. This is the first time I'll see that or paid attention to it, that a company that is not in the power sector is allowed or given the guides to generate electricity. And I was making a joke earlier in the studio that are we not all generating our own electricity in Nigeria? If you don't have a solar plant in your house, you probably have generating petrol, water, whatever, diesel or gas generating plants in your house. And, well, this is taking it a step further. So let's just talk about it. Is this moduli, is this like a natural phenomenon? Is it, what's the reason behind it? Is it that the nation cannot take care of itself and is expecting private entities to take care of power for it? What is the, what's all the situation surrounding this kind of. [00:04:58] Speaker C: So I think maybe a good place to start from is maybe understanding the captive concepts. And quite frankly, I think maybe in Nigeria, the captive concept is not new. MTN is just so big that they attract a lot of attention when things happen. But a lot of companies have been doing captive generation for their own use, and also different power developers have been working with this captive generation model. And I think maybe from an MTN perspective, what the news lacks maybe is the context to why MTN is doing this. So recently, MTN came out to announce the data center projects. They are doing expansion of their data centers and all of that. It may just be a very simple in house company policy that basically says, look, because of the reliability or security of supply, we want to control as well anything that has to do with our power on this site. So the concept is not new, but maybe, I'll probably say it's a bit new from an MTN perspective, and maybe the size as well. MTN already on a lot of their different will, I call them switching sites or switching centers already generating. But maybe it's not up to the 1 mw requirement that requires the license. Yeah, the license, but the concept is not new, not to MTN and not to most of the players in the market. But like I said, MTN is just so big that anything they do has a lot of attention. [00:06:43] Speaker B: Okay, so what is the idea behind the concept. [00:06:47] Speaker C: So normally if you need to, according to neck, that's the electricity regulatory council, if you need to generate beyond 1 mw for self use, then you need to obtain a captive license. And this is probably why cosm ten is doing about 15 mw. This is probably why they are doing that, which is why I said the announcement or the news doesn't really have the extra context to it. We don't know if it's for their switching centers. We don't know if it's for the new data center. We don't know if it's some, you know, new project that they are, they are rolling out. But maybe a little bit more context from the MTN side or perspective will also help to color that decision a little bit more, you know. But there is no, a lot of talk has gone on about it. You know, I've been a couple of forums or groups where people are really talking about is MT and starting to generate license. And I'm like, this is normal. Yeah. If you go to a lot of their centers today, they are generating their own power. It's nothing new. But again, I think the second or third time I'm saying it here, MTN is just so massive that when they do stuff, everybody sees it and it attracts a lot of attention. [00:08:03] Speaker B: So it sounds like a big deal. Well, for an average Nigerian, because when you say generating electricity in this sense, it seems it almost looked like, okay, this person is now like generating for commercial activities. But it seems from what you've explained is for the company's use. If they are going to be generating this electricity, no matter the volume, it is for their own use, either for their data centers or their power centers or anything like that. So it's not like for commercial use for anybody. [00:08:34] Speaker C: So it's for their own use. That's the concept of the licenses which have been issued to them to generate both 50 mw quite frankly as well in Nigeria is, I can understand why it's a big deal. So what the understanding is for their own use. [00:08:53] Speaker B: And yes, it's believed that companies like this actually consume a lot of power. Then it's coming to me, Manuel, that if this is possible, why are not many companies doing it? And we are complaining about power is chasing companies out, even multinationals. Why are they not doing it? [00:09:11] Speaker D: It's quite expensive. Now, I don't think getting a license alone is cheap. I mean, I use the word affordable since it's not consumer market. Then you now starting to generate your own power. So I'll give you an example, for August 23, nigerian telcos combined spent about 38 billion naira on power just that month. Now, if what, what does, what they stand to gain, right. Is more like you just mentioned, the more reliability by controlling more control over power. So they are not as susceptible to grid fluctuations, grid shutdowns and things like that. [00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:54] Speaker D: They are not susceptible to a certain extent, to the prices of diesel or fuel fluctuating up and down. [00:10:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:01] Speaker D: And, yeah, but it's quite an expensive interval, and you have to be a company of a certain size to be able to do something like that affordably. I know of a data center somewhere in Keja that does a lot. They try to be as off grid as much as possible, and they use a lot of gas to power their data centers to be able to get 99.99% reliability because a lot of companies depend on them. So. But they are generating their own power with gas. But you have to have to also understand, okay, yeah. The prices of gas can also fluctuate too. So whatever they're using to generate their electricity will also be very, very costly for them. So if you decide to go the solar route, solar panels and everything they have to spend on that. So not many companies will be able to afford it. [00:10:53] Speaker B: So it's more on the side of control than on cost, because. Because it's not. I don't know if it has to be because we were in this studio last week talking about telco's intention to, what's it called? Shed load for load shedding, because, well, they can't increase their tariff and operational costs and inflation and everything is affecting how much they spend. And now this is another cost increase. So I don't know if it's more of saving cost or just for control. [00:11:25] Speaker D: So that control gives them more cost savings. So how do I explain this? But the idea is by having more control over power, the amount of. So for every time you make a call and it doesn't go through, MTN is losing money. [00:11:40] Speaker B: Okay? [00:11:41] Speaker D: For every time a base station is shut down, a number of people are losing access to connectivity, and that's money lost for MTN. So if MTN has more control over power, they're able to control the reliability of their centers. So think about it this way. How much you're going to spend to generate their own power versus how much they will lose if a data center. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Shuts down or goes down for a few minutes. [00:12:05] Speaker D: For a few minutes, and how many customers they are going to lose. How many customers are going to say, hey, I'm not I'm done with this. MTN should go and start selling a car. You see those kind of things on Facebook. [00:12:15] Speaker B: Did I mention it? [00:12:16] Speaker D: So when you think about it, once they are, it's just like spending money. Think about it from a personal perspective. You spend money on your own inverter setup. It's a lot of money. You could have been spending your, can we buy your 5000 naira fuel small. I mean, paying your regular electricity bill. But when you spend a lot of money on inverter over the time or over number of years, you are saving a lot of money. [00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:46] Speaker D: The amount of productivity you're going to get in your work, your business offsets that costs they are pulling on. So if you, but not everybody can afford that cost to actually build an. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Inverter setup or a solar setup, I'm just like assuming expecting those big companies that are exiting Nigeria to this is solution. But yeah, I think Mujoda should be able to tell us that what goes into setting up an electricity generating facility? [00:13:15] Speaker C: So a lot goes into it. And I think again, you know, I said something when we started having this conversation that to really be able to color, you know, this license or transaction or project, there needs to be a bit more context to it. Yeah, because the context from a finance standpoint, context from an operations standpoint. So if you look at it from a finance standpoint, let's assume that maybe you want to do a two megawatt facility, maybe you need roughly, maybe four or 5 billion naira to set that up. However, this is capex that is going to come off your balance sheet. The other alternative to doing that can be you reach out to a private developer who has experience to do this, partner with them, sign a power purchase agreement, and they basically take on that cost. And you, as the company that needs the power, buys the power from them. So if you do that, you knock off the whole setup. Yeah, you knock off the whole upfront capital cost, you knock off the operations cost of manpower or staff or spares or whatever that you need to buy. And basically you are essentially just buying power from this company at an agreed rate. Which is why I said to really be able to color this discussion, then one needs to really look at it from the point of, is this being done from a policy angle? And when I say policy, internal company policy angle, to say our preference is to control end to end. Is this being done for a certain certification or license? Is this being done because the company is seeking to boost the assets or to boost the balance sheet? There are a lot of questions to why. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of whys to it from an operational angle. There's also a lot of whys to taking that approach from a finance angle. Because if I was to advise as a guy in the power space, I'll probably just say reach out to the guys that know how to do this, partner with them, collaborate, face your business, which is the telco business, and buy the power from somebody else. So today you are buying power from the disco, wherever it is they are operating. If you also look at the base station model, majority of the base stations are run by, you know, the base station operators that we have in the country today. The MNOs don't operate these base stations themselves. Majority. They have a few that some of them retain. But majority of these base stations are operated by, you know, the base station operators. And when you are working with IPP's, you know, in the case of generating power or maybe base station operators, you can leverage the economies of scale in that these guys may have five plants or seven plants. You know, they have staff who are dedicated to this stuff. They have spares where they are not just carrying spares for your particular dedicated facility, they have for other ones. You may also be lucky to find, you know, a power producer or generator who is generating power in the area where you need it, not just for you, but also to a couple of other people and also has a license for, you know, a distribution network. So that way you can drop, yes, you know, because of the collaboration and the economies of scaling that you can also drop, you know, the cost of your power. But like I said again, there may be a financial corrosion to the transaction. There may be an operational correlation to it, you know, and we need those insights for us to really be able to give context. And you know, speaking to companies that are exiting, I think that there is a plethora of options that are available and the cost of power, quite frankly, in Nigeria compared to, I'll probably say the western countries today is still relatively low. If you look at the naira per kilowatt hour, you're talking band in, which is 206. You know, I'm trying to do the math in my head. If you put that over 1800, maybe that's, I don't know, 14, $0.15, you know, per kilowatt hour. You know, if you are doing private IPP generation at the gas level, maybe you see people that would sell maybe 200 8300 naira per kilowatt hour range. This is like eighteen cents per kilowatt hour so if you compare that like for like again to other countries and also infuse the cost of labor in Nigeria, minimum wage, 70,000 naira. You know, I think that the conditions are favorable actually from that perspective, you know, but there are many other things, you know, in terms of the effects is going up, is coming down. The gas, of course, the gas prices are going up, coming down. The reliability of the supply or the availability of the gas, the infrastructure maybe to convey your products, you know, the policies, the government, those are more the issues that maybe may challenge those companies that are exiting and even the local companies, as opposed to just the cost of power by itself. [00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think going from there you can just talk about the loss. MTN group recorded in H 120 24. Well, my beef with it is that they put it all on Nigeria is MTN group. Excuse me. So Emmanuel, if my beef is my beef, so why, why should they put it on Nigeria? [00:18:53] Speaker D: So the reason why. It's very simple, right? Nigeria, so unlike you, have another major south african player in Nigeria, which is multi choice. Nigeria is not their biggest market. It's not even one of their major markets. Right. It's really grouped with the rest of Africa. But for MTN, it's about one over three of the entire the venue. Yeah. So if anything happens in Nigeria, it's usually a big hit to MTN group. And it's not just in Nigeria, to be fair, there's currency fluctuations in Sudan and you have about 3 billion in Iran that they've not been able to repatriate. So those are some of the concerns that you have. But, yeah, doing business in Nigeria is very, very difficult. Like pointed out, there are a lot of other factors. Power is just one that you could decide, okay, do I want to control it? Is it worth it for me to invest that amount? And. But there are a lot of other things going on. Right. Infrastructure issues. For now, we don't have the critical national infrastructure bill. To my knowledge. [00:20:02] Speaker B: You wrote that story. [00:20:04] Speaker D: To my knowledge, I don't. I've not been following the news cycle. But if I set up Google a lot, if I see that thing, you will know. I will know because. Yeah, but critical national infrastructure. So if you want to. If, if you want to look at that. But I'm not going to go into that. If you want to look at tariffs, they've been shouting, want to increase tariffs, but they've not been able to increase it for a bunch of reasons why I can't really get into. But Nigeria is a very, very big market. For MT. [00:20:34] Speaker B: And so they can't vex and exit. [00:20:37] Speaker D: But they are saying they want to sell some of their stake in the nigerian market. So they control about 70% or 70% to 80% right now. They want to kind of reduce it to 65% to sell to local shareholders. And I think they've been doing that. But this is the first time MTN group has been posting a lot since 2016 when they got that fine of $1 billion from the NCC. So you can see every time the nigerian market is hit, it typically affects MTN group. [00:21:08] Speaker B: They are serving a very important section of the economy. [00:21:13] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Literally. If MTN should then let me mention. But there was this thing that happened during the protest that actually shook a lot of people using MC. And they don't know whether they were throttling, which they refused to accept, but Internet work was terrible and it really affected a lot of people. [00:21:32] Speaker D: You know the interesting thing, right, since last year, I've stopped blaming telcos for network going down, because I remember what I said for every time you a call doesn't go through, it's lost. They are losing money. [00:21:45] Speaker B: They will not deliberately do it. [00:21:48] Speaker D: So if you are a company, would you deliberately want to lose money and lose the goodwill of millions of customers? [00:21:55] Speaker B: It depends on the motivation. [00:21:56] Speaker D: But interestingly, think about it this way. The slightest things that you just see as normal could affect telecom network. You could see a road construction going and be like, oh, they are doing this road. That could be a network that has gone because they've caught fiber cables. You could see, oh, they are doing protests and they start burning stuff and destroying things. They could have destroyed a power station. They could have destroyed the base station. So many, many things could be right. So we could decide to go the conspiracy route and say, oh, they're throttling. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Well, no opinions yet, but I don't call it conspiracy. But yeah, that's it about Mt. And Nigeria is a good market for them. So I believe that all the investment is worth it. And hopefully this will probably help other multinationals to think of focusing on generating their own power. [00:22:52] Speaker D: Is it worth it? [00:22:54] Speaker B: That's the question. Because sincerely, well, I think what Mujola mentioned is there are a lot of ramifications to this thing. There can be any other thing that can be controlling this. [00:23:05] Speaker D: Look at FX alone. So if as of last year, it was 800 naira for a dollar, and you are saying one six right now. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Repatriating funds for telcos that are not just local, you know what it costs them. So you know what it will now cost for this kind of investment. But they know what they are looking for and they will find it. [00:23:26] Speaker C: I'm sure. I'm sure they have their reasons. If I were in their shoes, I would completely de risk by passing on that responsibility to a company who has experience, you know, in that, in that field to handle that. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Is that what your company does? [00:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what we do. Maybe not on the gas side, but more on the distribution infrastructure as well as solar and metering solutions. And there are quite a few companies in that area that can really help you take on that upfront capital cost, bring the technical expertise they have, demand power, they can raise the finance and structure it. Right. All you just do is just take on that tariff. I feel like it's easier for those kind of companies, or companies like us to consolidate due to the combination of the aggregation of projects that they have, as opposed to you taking that. But like I said, I'm very sure that there's a coloration to that. [00:24:31] Speaker B: So moving to the second and the last story we have for today is about sterling. I don't know whether you'll be as confused as I am, but I'm going to tell you the news. So starling is building ground stations in a few locations in Nigeria. In Lagos State, in Ogun State, Port Hart in River State. And it has already kicked off building it in Lagos and it's planning to finish it by 2024. Now Starlink is the Internet satellite provider that many people boast of. That is giving them peace of mind when it comes to Internet connection currently in Nigeria by side. There was a day I went to Jumia pickup station. And if you see the truck they used to bring Starlink and be like this. You don't have money. Where do you put money to buy Starlink? But yes, a lot of people are using Starlink in Nigeria. But then I'm trying to understand why ground stations. You're not mobile provider. You are not even like the ISP's. You're cloud. Why so you're cloud. [00:25:50] Speaker D: Okay, that's an interesting one. I think I saw a start from Interpoint about Starlink. Is it third or fourth earlier in the year? Yeah. [00:25:59] Speaker B: Yes. [00:25:59] Speaker D: Like in third, right? [00:26:00] Speaker B: Yes. And you are wondering that where did they start? How did they overtake the others? [00:26:05] Speaker D: A lot of people are using Starlink and it shows there's a clear demand for it. So why ground stations? So they are also known as relay stations or gateway stations. So it's for network release. Okay. There might be other there might be other underground activities going on, right. But here's the surface explanation for why. [00:26:29] Speaker B: Can we do conspiracies? [00:26:32] Speaker D: Well, here the surface explanation for why satellites, Internet providers, need ground stations. So if you've been following some of my conversations, you notice that, okay, the world Internet is surrounded by fiber cables. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Basically. [00:26:44] Speaker D: Those fiber cables connect to landing stations. Landing stations connect to. We have data centers now, in recent years, we are now having more and more interesting developments in data center space, things like edge computing. So edge computing is where they're trying to bring these data centers closer to you as the user. User. So data centers, you typically find them close to the shore, the water. Right. A lot of them are in Lagos, but you hardly find data centers in a place like Kano or so. But edge computing, the idea is we're able to bring data centers to more remote locations and bring those data centers closer. So those data centers is what hosts most of the content. We have content delivery networks and. Yeah, a lot of those things right now, those ground stations, their duty is to actually connect to those data centers. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Okay? [00:27:38] Speaker D: So you send, you connect to your Starlink router. It goes to the satellite. Satellite brings it down to the ground station. Those ground stations now have easy access to data centers that are in that location. That location. So the idea is easy connection to whatever terrestrial Internet connectivity you have in that location. [00:28:01] Speaker B: So before it goes back to the existence of this ground station, now, what's the implication with the services that Starlink is providing? [00:28:09] Speaker D: The implication is it's going to be a lot more, it's a lot faster. [00:28:13] Speaker B: Faster than. [00:28:14] Speaker D: It's faster and a lot more reliable. Okay, so, yes, Starlink is fast, but I've gone to some places where Starlink is very terrible. Like I had to be asking myself, is this Starlink? When I was, I'm not going to mention the place. It's very, very far, close to Ekbe. Stalin was very terrible there, right? So, but then there are places, pockets of places like that, right? You have issues where if rain is falling, it's very difficult to connect and things like that. So the idea is there's more reliability and more, it's speedier connection. So before data centers, for instance, you could access the Internet, okay, the Internet will have to go all the way to Europe or the US and back. But now that you don't have, now that you have data centers, it's a lot more reliable and it's a lot faster. That's the idea behind ground stations. So relay network with whatever terrestrial infrastructure you have. Available. So that is the surface explanation. [00:29:11] Speaker B: Yes, surface explanation. And it's interesting because this is done in partnership with Equinix, the company that acquired Mayone. And they have a lot of data centers. So it makes sense. [00:29:24] Speaker D: Think about it. [00:29:28] Speaker B: Did I just say it makes sense? Yes, it makes sense in that context. It does make sense. And so, as it were. Now this is going to increase Starlink's competition. I don't know. The next stats intel point is going to release, it will probably be showing maybe they have overtaken the top players spectranet. And is this spectranetop in ISP? Probably. I can't really remember this stat. Yes. Right? Yes. So let's talk about implication, please. Let's do conspiracy. [00:30:04] Speaker D: Okay. [00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So what's the implication of this on the price? Let's start with the price. That seems like it's the first place to start. [00:30:16] Speaker D: I think it makes sense for the price to come down a little bit. I don't expect it to come down so much. [00:30:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:30:22] Speaker D: Mostly because the prices are also affected by other factors that we can't control, which is FX. I'm sorry. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Okay. [00:30:29] Speaker D: And Stalin is not, SpaceX is not a nigerian company. But I think an implication here could be we could see more pronounced presence of SpaceX in Nigeria. I think better customer support because I don't think their customer support is that great. So I think what they've done is they've made the service so good that the implication is okay. I could see reduced pricing in the future. Like more competitive pricing. Right. The pricing for the yearly subscription is already very competitive. I think 30,000 error or 45, between 30 to 45,000. Why I'm saying that range is because I don't know what the effects rate has turned, that prices, I think more of it is okay, what's the cost of the initial setup? It's very expensive. That's reduced. I'm not so sure it's going to reduce. But yeah, that is an interesting thing to think about. [00:31:26] Speaker B: Yes. So, Mojola, let's talk about other implications. [00:31:31] Speaker C: Well, the first implication is the service implication in terms of the reliability, the assuredness of the connectivity. Beyond that part of the service implication, then they also need to operate those stations. Which falls back a little bit to what Emmanuel was saying, that if you look at it, I think it augurs well for Nigeria in a little sense that there is no way but for SpaceX to increase their on site presence because those stations need to be manned, those stations need to be maintained, those stations need power. From a cost perspective, I suspect, even though mano thinks they should come down, I suspect that the cost may go up because having those ground stations also mean that the operational costs are going to increase. And as the operational costs are increasing, they may be narrow based operational cost, but because these guys are going to be reporting in USD as a, you know, maybe us based company, they will need to balance out. So I think we should brace up for impact, you know, like a lot of other, other sectors that are directly and then license. [00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, you know, you know, the issue that Stalin is still having in some african countries is we don't even accept you. We don't want people to use you. They are stopping people from using styling in some countries. Now you're coming into the terrain to come and play. He's going to be. Yes, you have other. No. [00:33:07] Speaker C: So the licensing, I think, was the last part, which is the mosque model is a very disrupt the market kind of model. And I think they've been able to do that with Starlink because it's just a plug and play solution that needs almost nothing or no one, so to speak. But the moment you start to have on ground presence, then you start to enter, you know, you start to enter the territory and you need to, would I say, link up with the powers that be, you know, and also comply to the regulations and the policies that that environment demands. Otherwise, you know, there may start to be risk of, you know, access to your stations or your ability to be able to, you know. So I think there's also just a certain kind of limit that you may have without that on ground presence. So they've tried it, you know, up to a certain point, and they've seen that, look, this market clearly appears to be viable because we are delivering, you know, so much or there's so much demand in this market, and that's probably led to this need for on ground stations. But I think in the coming months. [00:34:22] Speaker B: Or the one in Lagos will be completed by the end of 2024, based on their projection, they should start getting ready for. Yes, because if you see the way, no tech companies, the way they try to diverge themselves from african countries, we are platforms, gig economy. Workers are just using our products. We are not really companies. They are not employers. But you are coming in to employ local people, use our local facilities. Are we styling the best? [00:34:52] Speaker D: We shouldn't invest. I think we should be right now locally. I think we should also be concerned about data sovereignty. [00:35:01] Speaker B: We are getting where you want us to get. [00:35:05] Speaker D: But I'm not going to go all out and go into a conspiracy, but I'm concerned about that. Let's leave it like that. [00:35:13] Speaker B: Why are you gonna do that? But yes, we have it behind the camera. [00:35:20] Speaker D: Oh, okay. [00:35:21] Speaker B: At least I'm not going to hear this. I'm so sorry. But yes, that is it. About Starlink and MTN today on the tech point of Care podcast. Thank you, Mojola and Emmanuel for joining me. That's been a very awesome conversation, and I believe that our listeners have also learned a thing or two. Seven, what we've talked about today and all the expositions you've given, thank you for joining me. To all our listeners, thank you for joining us once again, don't forget to check out all the things that happen in african tech this week on the Tech Points Africa website. You can also subscribe to our other podcasts. We have the Equity Merchant podcast. We have the modern workplace Conversations podcast. We have the how the Cool Tech Works podcast. You can subscribe to those ones. [00:36:14] Speaker D: I've not seen that. [00:36:15] Speaker B: How could tech works? You're late to the party, but it's not too late. Aqua tech works, where Bolu talks about the little, little things we just feel like voice recording, for instance, voice typing, for instance, or recaptcha just goes into the intricacies of it and help us to understand that's what the podcast is about. All these podcasts also have accompanying newsletters, so do well to subscribe to them. And also subscribe to Tech Point Digest, um, undoed by the Star girl. Meanwhile, there is a tech point digest mixer coming, and it's only for subscribers. It's coming in September 20. So subscribe and also register to attend. Can't wait to. Why would it be free? Okay, you want to come and mingle? You want to do it free? So, um, please do it to register. Register for that. I think that is that. On today's episode of Tech Point. I've Car podcast. Catch you in the next one. Bye.

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