WiFrica is a Joint-Venture Company with its headquarters in Hong Kong. The company was formed with a specific regional mandate, which is to provide tailor-made Wi-Fi Data Offload Solutions to Mobile Network Operators and other data providers across the African Continent.

With the growing demand for data and better connectivity on the African continent, WiFrica’s solutions are designed to ensure high=speed broadband Wi-Fi Internet to mobile users, residential and commercial users. Beyond the speed and quality of WiFrica’s services is the company’s commitment to bring connectivity in a meaningful, cost effective way to the rural community, which in turn promotes their development by being able to be connected to the outside world. WiFrica, is a company committed to facilitating and enabling access to information, communication and community development.

The solutions offered by WiFrica are designed to compliment existing 3G/4G operator networks. This is achieved by integration of hardware and management software with the operator’s core.

The result for the operator is that it will have the ability to effectively manage the allocation of data to end-users with this qualitative internet experience approach, which will in turn lead to increased demand for data, therefore boosting the operator’s revenue. In addition to this, the Wifrica approach and solutions are designed in a manner that considers the high cost of maintaining telecom towers, which are considerably more expensive to maintain than in other continents. By deploying our long range solutions, operators are able to attract and capture new customers, by using less towers, resulting in less infrastructure investment and site Opex. All of this allows the operator the ability to provide reliable; robust and dependable ‘last mile’ solutions with an economical approach.

The WiFrica Joint Venture is structured with DAS Holdings Limited as the founder and operational entity responsible for all commercial and deployment of equipments. China Communications Company Limited (000678.SZ) is the technical and financial partner. The partnership is mutually exclusive.

• Traditional phone calls and SMS continue to be gradually replaced by VOIP and App based chat platforms because :

• Cheaper on local/long-distance calls, Group call features
• More accessible and reliable than voice calls
• media messengers are starting to replace even emails

• Increasing private and public sector developments in usual day to day tools (such as E-Government, E-Banking, E-care, Remote Learning) are data driven, with more to come, which is adding to the problem

• Despite the availability of optical fibre, 3G and 4G are adversely impacted by data demand because 3G throughput and speed is limited and 4G is available to select phones only and with the data price being low, Operators are struggling to invest in the demand

• The adoption and current demand for streaming videos have a huge adverse impact on the current MNO networks (You tube, streaming video sites, Face time) and are for that reason already being ‘restricted’ in some countries to Wi-Fi only

• Africa still needs more towers and because of the range limitations of 3G and 4G, Operators are reluctant to make last-mile infrastructure investments as these cannot provide the required returns