Connecting Africa, our must-read news site about the African telecoms market, last week wrote a piece about how mobile data prices in Nigeria have dropped by 75% over the past five years. This is according to data from Research ICT Africa, a policy and regulation think-tank, which showed that the average price of 1GB of data in Nigeria has dropped from $11.15 in mid-2014 to $2.78 at the end of 2019.

Vessels of all sizes generate increasing data volumes, from IoT devices, on-board processes and applications, as well as personal communications devices. Managing this flow is increasingly complex – and can be costly if satellite is the only option. But not all data is time-critical. Telecom26 provides an advanced router that enables data transfer to be optimised, enabling access to terrestrial networks when in range and satellite while at sea. It controls data transmission and chooses the optimum path, based on application.

The well-respected and influential African telecom news site Connecting Africa recently wrote an interesting piece following an interview with Akinwale Goodluck, head of the GSMA’s operations in Africa, during which he said many things that we at Telecom26 thoroughly agree with:

Europe’s cargo ports are booming, but as the volume of freight increases and demands for IoT tracking grows so too do calls for digital transformation that will create the next-generation of ‘smart ports’. Find out what’s happening – and how we’re driving developments.

It’s actually quite difficult to find out how many MNOs there are in the world. The GSMA says that its members include more than 750 operators but this includes fixed and satellite operators.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to connecting thousands of ‘things’ to the Internet – the so-called ‘Massive IoT’ – during maritime transportation is that of connectivity. Current 4G standards and other connectivity technologies simply cannot handle the sheer number of items in a relatively confined space.