BD Insider: Why Telkom is stalling on launching 5G on phones

Jesutofunmi Adedoyin -

A series of leaks has pushed Google to fully unveil its latest smartphone, the Pixel 9 Pro, weeks ahead of its planned event. Following Samsung’s announcement of new models last week, Google is the latest to make a move in this competitive showdown.

Speaking of Samsung, that’s the answer to our trivia question on Wednesday.

In this letter, we explore:

  • d.light to power up East Africa with $176 million funding
  • Why Telkom is stalling on launching 5G on phones
  • OpenAI releases a more affordable and smarter AI model

We also curated updates on startup funding in Africa, weekend reads, and several opportunities.

THE BIG THREE

d.light to power up East Africa with $176 million funding

Photo Credit: d.light

Over 600 million Africans lack access to electricity, making Africa the continent with the lowest percentage of its population having access to power. However, off-grid solar provider d.light aims to reduce these numbers by providing six million people across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda access to reliable and renewable energy over the next three years.

On Wednesday, it announced the closing of a new securitisation (debt) facility that will purchase $176 million of receivables in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Recognising the economic challenges their target audience faces, they've adapted their product strategy by unbundling multiple solar-powered products from a single package and making them individually to buy as and when customers have the money to do so through their PayGo service.

Context: This is d.light's fifth securitisation facility since 2020, bringing its total debt financing to $718 million. It has a successful history of using securitised financing to support solar power initiatives in East Africa. Since 2010, it has established partnerships with distributors in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

In February, d.light announced that its $110 million securitisation facility, Brighter Life Kenya 1 Limited (BLK1), successfully repaid its entire senior debt in full and ahead of schedule from internally generated cash flows – the first facility in the off-grid solar sector to do so.

Last year, the African off-grid solar sector raised a total of $425 million across 158 deals, with a significant portion—$281 million—coming from debt financing. Sun King, d.light, Engie Energy Access, M-KOPA, Zola, and Bboxx collectively accounted for 58% of the total investments in the sector. This shows that most of the funding went to startups or scale-ups with a presence in Africa.​

This significant funding boost makes the future bright for Africa.

Why Telkom is stalling on launching 5G on phones

Source: Telecom.com

Despite launching 5G services two years ago and boasting a customer base of 20.4 million, South African mobile network operator Telkom has yet to launch 5G on phones.

Telkom's network is ready for 5G. They have the capacity and infrastructure to launch 5G on phones. But according to Telkom CEO Lunga Siyo, there's a catch. Most of their customers don't see a massive difference in speed between 5G and 4G to justify the hefty price tag of a new 5G phone.

Another factor at play here is simplicity. Telkom boasts a network dominated by 4G-compatible phones. This uniformity makes things nice and smooth for them – managing the network becomes easier, and power consumption stays low (which is a big deal when running a mobile network). But with 5G, things get a bit more complex. Different devices with varying capabilities require extra attention, potentially pushing up costs.

Telkom expects 5G phone prices to drop as the technology becomes more mainstream. As more people jump on the 5G bandwagon, the cost of these devices will naturally come down. This will not only make 5G phones more accessible but also push down the prices of older 4G models, giving budget-conscious consumers a chance to upgrade without feeling the pinch.

Context: Telkom became the fourth network operation to launch 5G services in South Africa after Rain, MTN, and Vodacom. In terms of the rate of adoption of 5G in Africa, South Africa leads the way with 5 million mobile 5G subscriptions, followed by Mauritius and Nigeria with 80,000 and 50,000 monthly 5G subscriptions, respectively.

A report by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) forecasts that 5G adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa will reach 17% by 2030. Meanwhile, 4G is expected to account for 49% of all mobile connections in the region by the same year.

Looking ahead: Telkom is optimistic. They believe that a recovering South African economy and lower interest rates will pave the way for a more robust 5G market within the next three to five years.

OpenAI releases GPT-4o Mini – A more affordable and smarter AI model

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

OpenAI is making ChatGPT more affordable with its cheaper GPT-4o Mini model. This model is said to cost significantly less than full-sized models and is said to be more capable than GPT-3.5.

The new, lightweight model will support text and vision in the API, and OpenAI says it will soon handle all multimodal inputs and outputs, such as video and audio.

How it compares to others: When subjected to the Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU), a benchmark exam consisting of about 16,000 multiple-choice questions across 57 academic subjects, GPT-4o Mini scored 82%, GPT-3.5 scored 70%, GPT-4o scored 88.7%. Gemini Ultra had the highest score of 90%, while Claude 3 Haiku and Gemini 1.5 Flash scored 75.2% and 78.9%, respectively.

Developers will pay 15 cents per 1M input tokens and 60 cents per 1M output tokens (roughly the equivalent of 2500 pages in a standard book), for this model, according to the statement by OpenAI.

 💰 Recently Funded Companies

Here’s a roundup of African startups that secured funding last week:

  • Egyptian Fintech Dopay has secured a $13.5 million Series A extension round. Argentem Creek Partners is leading the round, which includes existing investors.
  • Kenyan Startup Bio-Logical has secured $1.3 million in funding. CrossBoundary, Redshaw Advisors, and other existing investors, including the Steyn Group, led the funding round.

 📰 Weekend reads

 🎥 Weekend watchlist

 💼 Opportunities

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