The 7 best African countries for international voice from USA

On my last post (International voice traffic from USA: 7 countries for a $1.6 billion market) I took a look at the 7 largest countries where voice traffic from USA is terminated:

• 2 countries from North America: Canada and Mexico.
• 3 countries from Latam and Caribe: Colombia, Cuba and Honduras.
• 2 countries from Asia: India and Philippines.

However, where I enjoy the most providing international voice termination to USA retailers is to African countries where competition from other carriers is not that high...

African countries usually:

1. Are eager to collect telecom taxes from operators in order to finance their infrastructures.
2. Have very high MTR's (Mobile Termination Rates) that are strictly regulated and increased from time to time.
3. Strongly persecutes grey routes (like SIMboxes).

The 7 largest African countries for USA-originated voice traffic (according to 2014 official data) are:

• SENEGAL: 46.5M USA annual revenue -> 78k daily minutes at an average of 30.45 $cent/min.
• MOROCCO: 31.8M USA annual revenue -> 50k daily minutes at an average of 25.10 $cent/min.
• GHANA: 24.1M USA annual revenue -> 147k daily minutes at an average of 18.84 $cent/min.
• GAMBIA: 21.8M USA annual revenue -> 39k daily minutes at an average of 60.39 $cent/min.
• SUDAN: 21.6M USA annual revenue -> 60k daily minutes at an average of 23.73 $cent/min.
• ETHIOPIA: 21.0M USA annual revenue -> 181k daily minutes at an average of 21.31 $cent/min.
• MALI: 17.2M USA annual revenue -> 70k daily minutes at an average of 26.98 $cent/min.

As you can see these 7 countries have an average minute cost extremely high compared to North America, Latam or Asian countries (only similar to Cuba).

And, perhaps this is the main reason why I love voice traffic to Africa: there are much less competitors providing high quality routes suitable for retail.

Retailers from USA just need perfect quality routes to Africa, and they are not so easy to get these days!

Unprofessional carriers try to make their profit blending their CLI routing with grey routes or exchanging loop traffic with other operators. This causes really low quality routing, totally unsuitable for retailers with their own organic traffic.

And, as you probably know, since 2010 Senegal and Mali are my favorite African countries for terminating pure retail traffic from US retailers.

So, what's your experience with traffic to Africa?

****

About: Jose E. Puente holds a MSc degree in Telecommunications Engineering from University of Vigo (Spain). Having worked in the full technical deployment of one of the first new entrants (VODAFONE ESPAÑA, formerly Comunitel Global) once telecom market was liberalized in Spain in 1998, as Key Account Manager at the telecom subsidiary of IBERDROLA, and as Wholesale Business Director at OCEAN'S NETWORK (leading the strategy and transition from being a branded reseller of MOVISTAR to becoming a real MVNO over ORANGE network), Jose E. Puente is currently involved in International Business Development with ALISYS, TAITIC, MOBILETALK-Q and a few other companies from Europe and USA.

To contact Jose E. Puente, feel free to send an email to jepuente@gmail.com or call +34 654155756.