Internet for the Next Billion - Techno-Economic Analysis of an Operator Case in Egypt

Urban cities in developing countries represent a market with huge potential in growth of mobile Internet users. For this study, Cairo in Egypt was chosen to represent a high population density urban city for a techno-economic analysis on providing Internet access to users with typical characteristics of those who will constitute the next billion users. A hypothetical Egyptian operator was created to compare deployment of different mobile data technologies (EDGE, WCDMA, and HSPA). The results estimate the capacity cost and cash flow based on assumed subscriber penetration, ARPU, traffic model and investment required over a period of time for a chosen scenario. Analysis of the results and the feasibility of the different mobile access technology scenarios demonstrated that the latest technologies have the most efficient capacity cost per subscriber.