poa internet
For the majority of Africans Internet access is either unaffordable or unavailable. The Internet has a huge impact on education, social inclusion, and commerce. Providing access to the unconnected communities presents a massive social and commercial opportunity.
Africa is 65% rural. Of the 35% urban population, many live in informal settlements. The population and/or revenue density in those areas simply doesn’t justify the cost of investment in fiber and 4G networks.
Poa Internet is disrupting this market by using low-cost WiFi based technologies to build wireless networks in marginalized communities. To empower local entrepreneurs to participate in the digital economy, we are introducing a new model that will enable a small business to become a micro Internet Service provider. This localized delivery model will drive commercial viability, reduce costs and accelerate scale. It will also create local commercial activity, employment and the development of technical skills in these communities.
In Africa, 65% of the population live in a rural setting. It has long been believed that, in rural Kenya agri-preneurship is the only viable form of entrepreneurship.
Some of the factors which contribute to these challenges is the lack of adequate infrastructure. Digital infrastructure is such an investment which has not made much if any inroads into the rural areas hence reducing the chances that the rural population would have to get a piece of the digital economy. Laying of these infrastructure is deemed expensive due to the sparsely populated nature of rural Kenya.
To promote good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship in rural areas, poa internet will introduce a sharing model where people can use this avenue to venture into digital entrepreneurship. This sharing model provides a platform and tools for micro-entrepreneurs to monetize their internet connection so that they become more resilient. It is particularly suited for the informal sector or where the economy is scaled down to small packets that can be easily sold to consumers. The informal internet reseller businesses are usually run by youth, women and marginalized groups, so enabling them to scale through tools, platforms, training, access to finance will improve their livelihood.
The sharing model is a proposition that comes on top of our current home proposition. We will provide the digital entrepreneur with an internet connection to his premise that has a higher speed/bandwidth. This internet connection will be delivered through a wireless point-to-multipoint connection via an antenna that we will install on the rooftop.
The sharing model proposition will have:
Highspeed, low cost broadband for your business or home
Install one or more high powered WiFi hotspots to share you Internet connection with your customers, neighbours and tenants
Generate revenues through
The sale of Internet access
Providing digitally enabled services
Selling smartphones
Mobile phone charging
App and cloud-based platform to easily manage your hotspots, sell access and manage the service
Micro Financing of equipment available
Free online training on how to set up, operate and manage your hotspots.
Make your business more attractive to your customers and generate footfall. Create adjunct revenue opportunities e.g. selling sodas to customers using Internet
Professional installation of equipment at your premises within 48 hours
Training and certification as Poa hotspot operator
2nd line support for you and your customers
Poa marketing materials for display in and around your business
As a consequence of rural to urban migration, most of the population left in rural areas is that of women and marginalized groups. This project's main aim is to install infrastructure in these rural areas. As such, the biggest beneficiaries will be these women and other marginalized groups. In addition, the shops in rural areas (dukas), are mostly run by youths, women and other marginalized groups, so those will be the micro-entrepreneurs we target and help to become more resilient.
At the heart our service will be a network of micro-entrepreneurs. We will identify existing local stores, known commonly as Dukas and will empower them with digital skills training to offer a range of internet access and digital products. This will include hosting and operating public WiFi hotspots, selling micro-financed smartphones, WiFi access and home broadband, and selling digital services such as fintech and edutech products.
Our solution will create much needed technology jobs among the youth in these communities. It will drive additional revenue opportunities and footfall to the Dukas. In addition most of the Dukas in rural areas are run by women, ensuring that we will help bridge the gender gap as well as the digital divide.
- Enable small and new businesses, especially in untapped communities, to prosper and create good jobs through access to capital, networks, and technology
Our sharing model is a technology-based solution that spur good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurial opportunities. Our solution will:
enable micro-entrepreneurs in untapped communities like urban slums and rural areas. It will help make the entrepreneurs and the communities they serve, more resilient.
provide them with access to technology and micro-financing
create jobs; additional FTEs working for these entrepreneurs as well as new entrepreneurs
equip entrepreneurs and the community at large with technological and digital literacy. We will offer digital training as well as free digital content on our platform to facilitate the same
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth
- A new business model or process
Poa is using a different technology and network stack, designed from the ground up to offer affordable internet in areas where the others don't go. Where traditional communication service providers are trying to discourage people from sharing their connection, poa internet will instead develop tools and systems to enable and support that.
Our competition:
Mobile Network Operators; with ubiquitous coverage of 2G (voice), but less so with 3G and especially 4G. Prohibitive pricing, especially when buying the daily bundles due to hand-to-mouth behaviour which is common in the informal economy, resulting in limited engagement with the Internet
Internet Service Providers; typically focused on the mid- to high-income areas in an urban setting. Their technology is capital intensive and as such they require a certain revenue density, resulting in prohibitive pricing and selected coverage
The informal resellers (commonly known as 'samabaza'); an entrepreneurial individual that has to some extent replicated a network topology similar to poa internet. They will typically have their own consumer Internet at home from one of the ISPs and then branch out and share it with their neighbors, resulting in poor quality at the end point
Rather than fight the latter, we want to work WITH them instead. As well as with the shop owners (commonly known as 'duka') to help both segments to monetize their Internet connection more efficiently. Creating more resilience within the community, drive Internet adoption, create employment and achieve our mission.
Poa will deploy Smart Towers to bridge the last 100 miles from fibre to the areas where customers live. These smart towers have the following specifications:
Low cost, low power, lightweight
Unlicensed 5 GHz Spectrum
Line of sight between towers up to 50km apart
Quick and inexpensive deployment
Modular ability to add technologies
Off the shelf components from Ubiquiti and Mikrotik, thus lowering CAPEX
The towers are solar powered enabling low cost rural deployment
No grid dependency
Low operating cost
Environmentally friendly
Low maintenance
Easy rural deployment
Customer premise equipment and training
Poa will deploy high power access points at the customer premise to assist the customers to share their connection for commercial purpose
Poa will will offer digital training as well as free digital content on our platform to facilitate the same
Delivering a wide range of internet business models
Home broadband
Public WiFi
Poa pro- where we encourage sharing and commercialization of the end product.
Platform:
Poa will create a customer management platform/app for the digital entrepreneur to enable them to resell internet in small packages and monetize their connection
The app will also have the digital education resources for both the micro-entrepreneur as well as the end users
Poa internet has developed its solution from the ground up, using off the shelf equipment. It uses low-cost WiFi based equipment. The low OPEX and CAPEX costs of this technology enables us to profitably deliver Internet connectivity at a fraction of the price of traditional fibre and 4G providers.
Differentiated technology strategy giving cost advantage:
Poa’s backbone and edge network are based on innovative use of WiFi and solar technology. Our infrastructure is 90% cheaper than equivalent 4G technologies
This cost advance enables Poa to pass on substantial savings to our customers. Our home and SME broadband is 35% cheaper than the closest competitor and our WiFi hotspots are over 50% cheaper than 4G services.
Poa’s network is controlled by proprietary software platform raising barriers to entry for organizations looking to duplicate our model
The network equipment used is from renowned vendors in this space (Netonix, Ubiquiti and Mikrotik) who have been around for years and their equipment is used worldwide by Wireless ISPs
- Software and Mobile Applications
Poa internet Theory of Change (ToC)
The problem with the Internet in Africa is that it is either not available or it is unaffordable, it is underutilized and slow. This translates into the following problems for people:
Customer technology/equipment is costly for the individual
Prohibitive costing creates scarcity
Digital skills potential not yet unlocked
The latter 2 reinforce each other, either positively or negatively.
Poa’s mission is to fix this: Internet in every African home. This in turn will help achieve its vision to drive digital inclusion for a more equitable world.
The intervention, sometimes called ‘strategy’ or ‘activity’ is to introduce and proactively facilitate a ‘sharing model’.
We believe that by introducing the sharing model, more people will start progressing on the internet adoption curve, whilst creating a resilient community by offering diversified revenue streams to micro-entrepreneurs, the backbone of African society.
This sharing model has different elements to it, so these are sub-interventions:
High-speed, low cost broadband for your business
Digital skills training
Free digital educational resources
The above demonstrates that the introduction of the sharing model will have a couple of outputs:
It will allow for innovative ‘last inch’ solutions; both sharer as well as neighbor will be assisted in finding the most effective way to get internet access to the customer
Maximized value of the Internet; sharers will have diversified revenue streams generated from the Internet. Consumers will have more access to Internet at a price point that is within reach for everyone;
Access to digital education resources; by offering 3rd party content, digital education training as well as 3rd party services, we create an ecosystem that will benefit both sharer as well as customer.
These outputs in turn will have a couple of groundbreaking, short-term outcomes:
Affordable high-volume, high-speed internet
Community digital educators accelerate learning
By introducing this intervention, it will drive the medium term outcomes that are required to achieve the long-term outcome of Internet in every African home:
Ubiquitous access
Adequate digital education
- Women & Girls
- Rural
- Peri-Urban
- Urban
- Low-Income
- 4. Quality Education
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- Kenya
- Kenya
- Rwanda
Our current proposition, fixed wireless access to the home (home internet), has over 12,000 customers.
We intend to grow organically to double this number in the next 12 months.
In 5 years time, we anticipate to have over a million customers
By introducing this proof of concept, we believe that we can reach several hundreds of micro-entrepreneurs in a year, who in turn will each on average serve 9 customers. In addition, they will serve thousands of customers by their public WiFi offering. If successful, this intervention will help us to exponentially grow the subscriber base in a very sustainable way, deeply ingrained into the local community, making the latter more resilient. It will assist in reducing the cost to grow as well as provide innovative last inch solutions, thus reducing the prohibitive costing as a friction point for people to get online in a meaningful way. This in turn will increase the number of customers that we serve (indirectly) exponentially.
We have a home internet proposition that has gained considerable commercial traction since its inception in 2017. On top of that, due to our relentless focus on unit economics, it currently has a break even of less than 24 months on a per customer basis. The sharing model is a natural extension of this home internet proposition, providing more bandwidth to entrepreneurial people as well as tools and a platform to help them monetize their internet connection.
Poa Internet’s vision is to provide internet access to 1 million African homes and small businesses within 5 years.
This vision is innovative and transformative because ISPs and MNOs focus on densely populated, middle class urban areas. Our focus is on rural and low-income communities that are underserved by these existing providers. As a result we expect to connect many of our customers to the Internet for the first time facilitating all the benefits that accrue from crossing the digital divide.
In addition, ISPs and MNOs deliver via a direct to consumer model generating little direct local commercial activity or employment in the areas where they operate. Instead of using a direct to consumer model, we enable local small businesses to resell and deliver internet access to their community. This localised delivery model will drive commercial viability, reduce costs and accelerate scale. It will empower communities to help themselves and create local commercial activity, employment and the development of technical skills amongst rural and poorly educated populations.
Currently, our growth is constrained by the amount of capital deployed. As we have to both build infrastructure as well as invest in customer equipment, our growth rate is limited. This, in turn then results in customer pricing that is still prohibitive for a large part of the market. Disposable income is limited.
Besides disposable income, knowledge of the possibilities of the internet is limited, especially in a rural setting. People may think that Facebook and WhatsApp IS the internet, especially if you live in an area where 3G/4G has not yet been deployed
Availability of internet enabled devices such as smartphones, laptops. Although they have come down in price since inception, still not everyone has an internet enabled device.
We are currently using unlicensed spectrum in the 5GHz space to build out our network towards the areas that we serve. Although very cost efficient, it also has limitations, such as reach, throughput as well as line of sight/quality of service challenges
People are industrious and resourceful, but in some cases lack the tools and knowledge to fully utilize the potential of the opportunities that high speed bandwidth can give them.
One of the underlying principles of the sharing model is that we continue to deploy network infrastructure, but that the micro-entrepreneur will invest in its own hardware, the customer premise equipment. The entrepreneur will be inclined to do so, as there is a clear business case for it. The entrepreneur in turn will, assisted by the tools and training we provide, be able to resell the internet connection to neighbours, customers and the like.
Besides tools and a platform for monetization of the Internet, we will also provide free digital training for MSMEs. Also, there will be free digital educational resources provided to educate users on the possibilities of the Internet. This will greatly help in increasing digital literacy and this driving Internet adoption, which is beneficial for end users, micro-entrepreneurs as well as poa
We will be offering micro-financed Internet enabled devices, in partnership with Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) which will help lower the barrier to entry for the people in those marginalized communities
To maximize our addressable market we will adopt a multi-technology approach that will use the most suitable approach delivery depending on where the customer lives:
mmWave for dense urban
fiber with wireless distribution (hybrid model) for dense urban and low-density urban
5GHz for low-density urban and peri-rural
Low frequency LTE (using 450MHz) for peri-rural and rural
By creating a platform with an app, as well as providing training and resources, we will remove potential friction points for MSMEs and help them monetize their connection
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Full time
Sales team of 30.
Office/support 20.
Technical: 20
Contractors
Technical 20
Poa Internet is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. It operates in several counties in Kenya, The team is a unique mix of cultures with a variety of experience across the board.
CEO
Andy Halsall: 25 years telecom and emerging market experience Fon, Palace Ventures, Orange, McKinsey, AMS and IBM. MBA London Business School, BSc Computer Science University of Bradford.
COO
Chris Rhodes: 21 years telecom and tech company experience Talk Talk, MCI WorldCom, NTL, Level 3 and Radialpoint. MBA London Business School, BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Bradford
CBDO
DJ Koeman: 21 years telecom and emerging market experience Equitel, Airtel, Narrow Minds, Digicel, Vodafone, Orange & KPN. BHA from Hotelschool The Hague.
CTO
Mike Puchol: 15 years telecoms and wireless systems experience Fon, Whisher, Social & Beyond. BSc Aeronautical Engineering University of Salford.
All 4 co-founders are still actively involved in the business. 3 of them live in Kenya and between the 4 of them, they have over 80 years of experience in the telecommunications sector, including start up and emerging market experience.
At Poa we really believe in what we’re doing. For most it's more than just a pay cheque -it is an opportunity to directly engage with the communities we work with and make a real difference to people’s lives.
We work together to solve issues and encourage a culture where you get to think, not just do and you're allowed to make mistakes as you learn.
Poa is in partnership with Liquid Telecom. Liquid provides wholesale internet to poa as well as domestic fiber connectivity (local loop or ‘middle mile’) where poa then connects the last mile (or 100 miles) to the customers. We are deepening our relationship to move from traditional vendor-customer to strategic partnership, as our goals are very much aligned
We have also partnered with Google X as a test-bed for their new technology Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) where we were the first company to commercially use this top off the shelf technology as a point to point wireless connection with extremely high throughput capacity. X is the moonshot factory within Alphabet (Google), trying to solve big problems, such as getting the next billion people online. They have found us to be instrumental in gaining insights into what possible ways there are to do so.
We have had positive experience in the past partnering with Community Based Organisations (CBOs) in the urban slum of Kibera where we operate. We partnered with Carolina for Kibera (CFK) that focuses on women empowerment through information, education and medical treatment. We also partnered with Amani Kibera (amani is the Swahili word for peace), another CBO in Kibera that focuses on peace and youth empowerment.
Poa is a for profit organisation. We generate revenues through the prepaid sales of Internet access to consumers and small businesses. This is a well proven model across the Global South.
As more and more people will be able to access the internet, it will have positive impacts on access to services and welfare, such as social and health services, information about diseases and health risks, quality education and learning and access to information.
Providing digital connectivity to these marginalized communities, urban slums and rural areas, will have tremendous impact on capacity development, such as new knowledge, skills, use and transfer of technology and innovation know how. We will be creating e-learning modules for the micro-entrepreneurs to help them maximize their revenue opportunities, thus making them more resilient.
Traditionally, the people living in urban slums and rural communities are marginalized and 'left behind'. The traditional operators, mobile or fixed, don't have a justifiable business case to provide high speed broadband access. In rural areas, it is usually the woman that stays behind, running a small shop from subsistence farming. And youth, for whom there was no money to take them to college. For these groups, providing connectivity will mean democratizing internet access and as such will have tremendous impacts on gender equality and social inclusion, such as women's inclusion, strategies that maximize the 'leaving no-one behind' agenda.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
As poa we have raised money, a combination of equity and debt. We have also raised some grants that funded trials and proofs of concept.
The capital raised is then deployed into our core business, predominantly as network CAPEX and customer CAPEX. When selling to a new customer, we normally charge an installation fee and the 1st month of service. Besides the customer premise equipment, we incur additional costs once we have sold a customer connection; marketing, sales costs, commission, installation costs, etc. So on day 1, we have a negative cash flow on a per customer basis. This is then recouped over a period of time, currently 24 months. So after 2 years, we break even on a per customer basis. We are on a trajectory of becoming EBITDA positive on a month-by-month basis by the end of 2020, beginning of 2021. This is for our core business, not factoring in the sharing model and other proofs of concept.
For the rural deployment we are raising grant money to deploy a proof of concept, through this MIT Solve Challenge. After the initial grant, this model should be able to sustain itself in that network footprint, so no additional grant funding required. If successful, we then intend to rollout at a larger scale, requiring grant money to do initial deployment of these new networks.
Currently, our growth is constrained by the amount of capital deployed. As we have to both build infrastructure as well as invest in customer equipment, our growth rate is limited. This, in turn then results in customer pricing that is still prohibitive for a large part of the market. Disposable income is limited.
Winning the MIT Solve challenge Good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship, will help us in running a trial for a different business model, the sharing model. We will do this by building this vital infrastructure which is missing in the rural areas. Empowering the rural communities will empower more people since they support a larger ecosystem. According to the 2019 Kenyan census, rural households in Kenya support an average of 5 members while urban households support 3 household members.
We believe that building this infrastructure in the rural areas will give the rural communities access to the digital entrepreneurial platform and will go a long way in bridging the digital divide gap while creating good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship.
Winning the MIT Solve challenge and becoming a Solver will give us inroads into advisors that can help with access to additional grant funding, further deepening the social impact of our solutions, forge partnerships and give additional advice on sustainability, inclusion, etc.
- Funding and revenue model
- Board members or advisors
- Monitoring and evaluation
Funding and revenue model: in order to be able to run this proof of concept, we will need external funding in the form of grant/prize money, as our current operational budget is already stretched. The revenue model for the micro-entrepreneurs will be similar to what we already have in the market, but the proof of concept is required to find the sweet spot for risk vs effort vs reward
Board members or advisors: as we are scaling the business and we are more and more focusing on impact, we welcome advisors and/or local board members
Monitoring and evaluation: the proof of concept for the sharing model will have a large M&E component. People with experience in this particular field are welcome to assist and contribute
Within the Solve ecosystem, you have several interesting advisors, for instance Eric Schmidt. he could be a person of interest when partnering with Google, as what we are doing is perfectly aligned with their objectives
Within the Solve team itself, there are various communities that could provide assistance, such as but not limited to: sustainability, partnerships, learning, etc. Our sharing model and platform with content is something that can have learning, health, etc all riding on the same infrastructure.
Outside Solve, partnerships with GSMA for instance is a possibility. For very remote locations, 5GHz may not be the right technology, but using low frequency LTE instead (450MHz). GSMA can assist with licensing as well as best practices for network deployment.
In addition, we will want to partner with Community Based Organisations (CBOs) in the areas where we want to run the trial.
Besides that, partnerships with 3rd parties, whose strategic goals are aligned with ours, are desired. For instance in the content space (Bridge International Academies) as well as in the education/training space (Kuza Biashara and smrt.bio)
As a consequence of rural to urban migration, most of the population left in rural areas is that of women and marginalized groups. This project's main aim is to install infrastructure in these rural areas. As such, the biggest beneficiaries will be these women and other marginalized groups. In addition, the shops in rural areas (dukas), are mostly run by women, so those will be the micro-entrepreneurs we target and help to become more resilient.
We will use the Women prize to build more infrastructure and/or provide more end user equipment to women entrepreneurs, so that it will create more opportunities for these women and girls. Together we can bridge the digital and gender divide.
With our sharing model, we are enabling entrepreneurs to monetize their internet connection and thus become more resilient. We do this by providing them with the tools and the platform that are necessary, as well as training and online resources. This platform will also have other online resources, to allow people to develop digital skills that will help them increase their chances in formal employment OR to develop diversified digital revenue streams, potentially becoming a poa digital entrepreneur. We are going to pilot this sharing model in the type of marginalized communities that we normally operate in, people that have traditionally been left behind, thus helping to bridge the digital divide. Should we win this prize, we will increase the number of MSMEs and/or network footprint for the trial.
The problem with Internet in Africa is that it is either not available or it is unaffordable, it is underutilized and slow:
- Expensive: It costs more than 3% of the average Kenyan household’s monthly income to purchase 1 Gb of data
- Slow: It takes 41 hours to download a 7.5 Gb movie in Gabon
- Unavailable: Less than 0.5% of African homes have a fiber internet connection
- Underused: 74% of Kenyan Internet users consume under 100 Mb of data per month
The emphasis on mobile resulting in expensive, slow, under-used and low availability Internet has some profound implications
For consumers:
- Mindset of scarcity rather than abundance
- Avoidance of rich media services
- Reticence to adopt new services
- Unwillingness to view ads
- Large incremental cost to do anything
For communication service providers (CSPs):
- Underused infrastructure
- Slow adoption of services
- Poor ROI
- Unattractive to investors
- Under investment
For Content Providers:
- Poor adoption
- Difficult to monetize services
- Breaks freemium and advertising based business models common in the West
- Difficult to keep services up to date and roll out new features
As a result, Africa is getting third class Internet and everyone is suffering
Poa’s mission is to fix this: Internet in every African home. This in turn will help achieving its vision to drive digital inclusion for a mor equitable world.
The intervention, sometimes called ‘strategy’ or ‘activity’ is to introduce and proactively facilitate a ‘sharing model’. This sharing model is unique in its kind, as normally, Communication Service Providers are trying to prevent this sharing from happening.
We believe that by introducing the sharing model, more people will start progressing on the internet adoption curve, whilst creating a resilient community by offering diversified revenue streams to micro-entrepreneurs, the backbone of African society.
This sharing model has different elements to it, so these are sub-interventions.
For the sharer:
- High-speed, low cost broadband for your business or home
- Install one or more high powered WiFi hotspots to share you Internet connection with your customers, neighbors and tenants
- Generate revenues through
- The sale of Internet access
- Providing digitally enabled services
- Selling smartphones
- Mobile phone charging
- App and cloud-based platform to easily manage your hotspots, sell access and manage the service
- Micro-financing of equipment available
- Free online training on how to setup, operate and manage your hotspots.
- Make your business more attractive to your customers and generate footfall. Create adjunct revenue opportunities e.g. selling sodas to customers using Internet
- Professional installation of equipment at your premises within 48 hours
- Training and certification as Poa hotspot operator
- 2nd line support for you and your customers
- Poa marketing materials for display in and around your business
For the neighbor, customer or tenant of the Sharer:
- Fast broadband access at WiFi hotspots located in neighborhood shops, businesses and in or near your home
- Hotspots located in convenient locations near residential areas. Don’t have to travel a long way to get online
- Buy Internet access from your neighbor, local shop owner or landlord, whom you know and have a personal relationship with
- Bite size access bundles making access affordable and accessible to hand-to mouth purchasing patterns
- Easily access to affordable digital services
- Buy micro-financed smartphones
- Easy, convenient and affordable place to charge your phone
- Affordable and financed Smartphones can be purchased at hotspot location
- Free Internet and IT training at hotspot location
- Affordable phone charging at hotspot locations
The above demonstrates that the introduction of the sharing model will have a couple of short term outcomes:
- It will allow for innovative ‘last inch’ solutions; both sharer as well as neighbor will be assisted in finding the most effective way to get internet access to the customer
- Maximized value of the Internet; sharers will have diversified revenue streams generated from the Internet. Consumers will have more access to Internet at a price point that is within reach for everyone; public WiFi for those with smaller wallets and home internet for those who can afford or need it
- Access to digital education resources; by offering 3rd party content, digital education training as well as 3rd party services, we create an ecosystem that will benefit both sharer as well as customer. The sharer will be able to increase knowledge on monetization as well as become an agent of change for its community, the customer will finally have access to online resources to help them advance in life; education, professional skills, digital jobs, etc.
With this prize, we will run a proof of concept to test the above.
Main questions to be answered are:
- Can we build an acceptable long-term business case for sharers?
- Can we build a viable business case to scale across East Africa?
Some of the underlying questions are:
For sharers;
- What revenue can they generate from access?
- What revenue can they generate from other digital services?
- Are revenues strong enough to compel the sharer to invest in the hotspot equipment
- What is the impact of (higher) footfall and ancillary business for the sharer?
- What work / effort is involved to operate hotspot and support customers?
For scaling the business;
- What are the purchasing and revenue metrics? -- Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), repeat purchases, customer volumes, average purchases per hotspot, ARPU per hotspot, number of people being shared with etc
- Does sharing at scale really improve the economics of the last mile?
- What are the real costs for operating in rural areas?
- What are customer usage metrics? -- volumes of data consumed, usage patterns
- What are the unit economics for the hotspot and home broadband propositions?
We will conduct research among end-users/customers, sharers (micro-entrepreneurs). We will also conduct research among poa internet staff, as they may provide interesting insights.
Passive research in the form of data collection as well as active research through semi-structured interviews, hot-housing, RCT and surveys (SMS, online)
We will also be testing the technical feasibility of the hardware and technology that we are using to deploy these networks: coverage, throughput, signal strength, up-time, power consumption, etc
CBDO