Information and Communication Centres are the bedrock of internet penetration in rural and underserved areas. They are usually easily accessible to the vast majority of citizen due to their low cost and proximity.

In the past, establishing a Cybercafé or a Computer Training Centre was the first choice of most first time ICT-related entrepreneurs. Consequently the rate of entry into the business was high.

However, due to prevailing infrastructure condition and lack of know-how in this particular business, the failure rate of these Centres became alarmingly high.

The major causes of failure are high operational cost and low revenue.

High operational cost is attributable to the high cost of independent power supply, maintenance and in some cases bandwidth. Low revenue is as a result of low patronage caused by consistent service disruption and bad location of Centre. These disruptions are as a result of malicious activities in the Local Area Network, Internet Service Provider activities, power failure as a result of over-used generating set and management. Each failed investment in the sector brings job losses and discourages the next investor.

These failures have given rise to a phenomenon that constantly turns communities that are apparently well served into underserved and those that are underserved into unserved as more ICT Centres close shop than open.

This has become a threat to internet penetration in the unserved and underserved part of the Country. It is only by arresting this failure trend that the situation can be reversed and internet penetration in those areas can be effectively achieved.

A major obstacle to arresting this failure trend is funding. Most proprietors of these Centres, at the time of failure, would have given up on spending any more money on the Centres. However auditing the remnants of the failed Centre and migrating it to a sustainable model is essential to the revival. This cost money.

SOLUTON OVERVIEW

Surfcity Networks Limited has been working on a project  to reverse the failure trend mentioned above and in so doing increase the number of functional ICT Centres and drive a faster penetration.

The Project identifies, evaluates and renders technical assistance to the bulk of Entrepreneurs and Establishments who, on their own risk, have ventured into the ICT Centre business, but are losing the battle for sustenance due to the same factors identified above.

In offering technical assistance within this project Surfcity Networks deploys its research based and tested ICT Centre model. This model, with low maintenance parameters, low energy requirement and very low operational cost, eliminates all non-Market related causes of failure in ICT Centre operations mentioned above. It also deploys several market-stimulating methods. These have been shown to be crucial to Sustenance. Similar models have been used successfully to drive penetration in rural India and Indonesia.

Due to its low energy equirement, the ICT Centre can now be powered by Solar Panels with low setup Cost. This has driven down cost of private power generation for the Centre.