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The Africa Telecom Towers and Allied Market size in terms of installed base is expected to grow from 199,092 units in 2023 to 249,652 units by 2028, at a CAGR of 4.63% during the forecast period (2023-2028).

New York, July 05, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Africa Telecom Towers and Allied Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2023 - 2028)" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06472491/?utm_source=GNW

With the outbreak of COVID-19, the telecom industry has witnessed a significant increase in demand for internet services due to a major chunk of the population staying at home and remote working conditions. The increase in people working from home has led to an increase in demand for downloading, online video viewing, and communication through video conferencing, all of which are leading to increased network traffic and data usage.

Key HighlightsThe telecom tower industry has drastically evolved over the past decade. The core towerco proposition and business models have been successfully adapted to match the demands of new markets in Africa. Many towercos are anticipated to hunker down in their core building business over the forecast period, buying and leasing vertical real estate, and such towercos may still see plenty of 5G antenna overlaid onto their towers.As per the Nigerian Communications Commission, as of January 2021, the number of third and fourth-generation telecom towers deployed in Nigeria has grown by 73.2%. Also, global tower companies are expanding their presence in the region, through strategic collaborations, due to the growing number of opportunities presented.The emergence of KaiOS and its partnerships with operators across Africa is helping overcome the affordability barrier for low-income users. The free resources offered, such as the Life app, also help new users develop digital skills and understand how the internet can be relevant. Such initiatives are expected to boost internet penetration in these countries significantly.Several initiatives by telecom operators and other organizations, especially in low and middle-income countries, are expected to spur growth in the rural areas as the residents of these areas gain increased access to internet connectivity.Furthermore, with businesses going mobile and adopting new concepts, like BYOD, to increase employee interaction and ease of use, it has become essential to provide a high-speed and quality network. The organizations have been looking forward to adopting BYOD aggressively in their operations, fueling the market growth over the forecast period. Furthermore, development in cloud-based services for mobile users and the roll-out of 4G LTE services worldwide have increased the investment into networks by carriers, which drives the demand for telecom towers.The increasing emphasis on improving internet connectivity to rural areas is one of the major factors stimulating the deployment and improvisation of the telecom infrastructure in these areas, thereby aiding the markets growth. Smartphone penetration, raising awareness, increasing penetration of digital technologies, and investments from several organizations and governments have been increasing the adoption of internet connections in the region.

Africa Telecom Towers & Allied Market Trends

Optical Fiber Market is Expected to Grow Significantly During the Forecast Period

The telecommunication and networking market witnessed a massive surge in demand in the region. The emergence of IoT in cloud computing and the demand for 5G networks are driving increased usage of optical fibers in a wide variety of applications: business, government, industrial, academic, and cloud servers in public and private networks.As per CommsUpdate, there was an interval of just three years between launching 3G and 4G services in Algeria, leading to issues. While all three major operators - Djezzy, Mobilis, and Ooredoo - have extended their coverage to all 48 provinces, they all received penalties from the regulator in 2020 for the poor quality of their services.Further, as per the Nigerian Communications Commission, as of January 2021, fiber optics cables have expanded by 16.4 % in the last five years. Also, according to IFC, a total of 1.1 million km of fiber optics have been installed in Africa, of which 50% have been deployed by private mobile network operators (MNOs). Moreover, about 40% of all fiber optic cable in Africa, a staggering 450,000 kilometers, is publicly owned. This includes government networks, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and utilities.The region has a developing telecom infrastructure, with growth encouraged by supportive regulatory measures and by government policies aimed at delivering serviceable internet connections across the region. Government-funded efforts, including the Universal Service Telecommunications (UTS) program, continue to ensure that fixed-line infrastructure is extended to underserved areas. Thus the slow growth in the number of fixed-telephony connections should be maintained during the next few years.Companies are getting into various partnerships to provide better services while controlling operating costs. For instance, during the beginning of 2021, Ooredoo Algeria deployed Nokias cloud-native Core software to strengthen its network performance and reliability cost-effectively and strategically positioned itself to launch new services to meet customer needs. This deployment is likely to improve the digital ecosystem of the country further.The infrastructure is based on a terrestrial fiber-optic network coupled with undersea cables, offering secure connectivity abroad from West Africa. This investment aims to support the digital ecosystem and meet the regions growing needs for connectivity.

Telecom Tower Market to Grow Significantly during the Forecast Period

The core towerco proposition and business models have been successfully adapted to match the demand from new markets in Africa. Many towercos are anticipated to hunker down in their core business of building, buying, and leasing vertical real estate over the forecast period. Such towercos may still see plenty of 5G antenna overlaid onto their towers.As per the Nigerian Communications Commission, as of January 2021, the number of third and fourth-generation telecom towers deployed in Nigeria has grown by 73.2%. Also, global tower companies have been expanding their presence in the region, through strategic collaborations, due to the growing number of opportunities presented.In January 2020, American Tower acquired Eaton Towers in a deal that included towers across five African countries. While American Tower already had a presence in Africa, the acquisition was a significant deal, demonstrating the types of investment being made in the region, particularly in the tower market.According to estimates by TowerXchange, there are roughly 25,767 towers in South Africa, serving 97mn SIMs, making it one of Africas best-covered markets. Five MNOs operate within the South African market, mainly MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, Cell, and C-and Rain. Cell C is in the process of shutting down its network and switching to a roaming agreement with MTN. They have slowly reached a point of bankruptcy since the sale of their portfolio to American Towers.Furthermore, with businesses going mobile and adopting new concepts like BYOD to increase employee interaction and ease of use, it has become essential to provide a high-speed and quality network. The organizations are looking forward to adopting BYOD aggressively in their operations, thereby fueling the market growth over the forecast period. Further, growth in cloud-based services for mobile users and the roll-out of 4G LTE services worldwide have increased the investment into networks by carriers, which drives the demand for telecom towers.Also, the increasing emphasis on improving internet connectivity to rural areas is one of the major factors stimulating the deployment and improvisation of the telecom infrastructure in these areas, thereby aiding the markets growth. Smartphone penetration, raising awareness, increasing penetration of digital technologies, and investments from several organizations and governments have been increasing the adoption of internet connections in the region.

Africa Telecom Towers & Allied Industry Overview

The African Telecom and Allied market is moderately competitive and consists of many global and regional players. These players account for a considerable market share and focus on expanding their client base globally. These players focus on research and development activities, strategic alliances, and other organic & inorganic growth strategies to stay in the market landscape over the forecast period.

March 2022 - Helios Towers, the independent telecommunications infrastructure company, announced the acquisition of Airtel Africas passive infrastructure company in Malawi, adding 723 sites to its portfolio.January 2022 - ZESCO Limited and Copperbelt Energy Corporation PLC signed an agreement to make new power supply and transmission arrangements. The negotiations, which started on January 17, 2022, are expected to replace the bulk supply agreement that expired on March 31, 2020.

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Africa Telecom Towers and Allied Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2023 - 2028) - Yahoo Finance

Automated Apartheid: How Israel's occupation is powered by big tech, AI, and spyware

In-depth: Israel's military occupation has become a laboratory for advanced surveillance systems, artificial intelligence, and spyware technology developed by Western corporations and Israel's army.

AI was a force multiplier, boasted Israeli officials after Operation Guardian of the Walls, an 11-day milliary attack on Gaza in 2021 which displaced over 91,000 Palestinians and left over 260 dead.

Almost two years later, foreign aid, big tech, and new advanced surveillance systems have quite literally laid the groundwork for what Amnesty International calls an Automated Apartheid, one that is powered by Western corporations like Google and Amazon on the outside, and entrenched by spyware and AI on the inside.

A new era: Occupation under automation

AI technology combined with a new far-right government have seen policies of repression in Israels military occupation escalate at an unprecedented rate over the last few years.

Autonomous weapon systems rely on sensor processing rather than human input, by selecting and engaging a target, Omar Shakir the Israel-Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, told The New Arab.These technologies make it easier to maintain and further entrench apartheid.

Since the beginning of 2023, the Israeli army has killed over 170 Palestinians, including at least 30 children. More than 290 Palestinian-owned buildings across the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been demolished or forcibly seized, displacing over 400 people and affecting the livelihoods or access to services of over 11,000 others.

In a recent 82-page comprehensive report on the use of technology in Israels military occupation, Amnesty International detailed how many of these atrocities are made possible by automated weapons, spyware, and unauthorised biometric systems, calling them crimes against humanity.

Spyware hacks into devices (phones or computers) without alerting the owner. The hackers open the microphone and camera on the device remotely to spy on the surroundings, and download all of the data on the device, Dr Shir Hever, the military embargo coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BDSNC), told The New Arab.

Pegasus spyware, the specific system used by the Israeli military, is not only used to breach peoples privacy by filing and scanning data but is also utilised to obtain information even from encrypted messaging services, and plant false evidence into the device without leaving a trace, Dr Hever added.

Most recently, Israels military has come under fire for their Wolf Pack facial recognition systems.

Nadim Nashif, the General Director and Co-Founder of 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, explained how Wolf Pack is used to facilitate Israels occupation.

It's an extensive predatory surveillance database system that contains profiles of nearly every Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, including photographs, family histories, education, and security ratings, he said.

There are countless variations of the program - Red Wolf, Blue Wolf, and White Wolf - which all take information from Palestinians without consent.

Blue Wolf has a colour-coded system that instructs soldiers to either arrest the individual or let them pass through. Israeli soldiers compete to capture the highest number of pictures in the app, Nashif explained.

The updated version of Blue Wolf, Red Wolf is now being used in illegal checkpoints in Hebron. If the system cannot locate the individuals image, it will register it on the databases, and they will be often denied crossing, Nashif added.

A lesser-known version, White Wolf, is used on Palestinian workers who have jobs in illegal settlements. It has the same tracking, harassment, and biometric features as the other two.

The emergence of Smart Cities in Israel has also allowed these tools to be deployed to track and surveil Palestinians under the disguise of tech advancement.

Places like Jerusalem have Smart City technology, that uses cameras, facial recognition, and advanced technological systems that are used at the entries of checkpoints, said Shakir.

With cameras pointing into homes and scanning Palestinians at checkpoints and as they go about their everyday lives, reality under Israeli occupation is becoming increasingly dystopian.

Surveillance impacts our day-to-day activities and behaviours, adding to existing constraints to freedom of movement. We as Palestinians think twice before logging into the internet, using our phones to call a loved one, or meeting with friends in a public space. We are cautious with every move we make, every word we say, Nashif explained.

Residents in Hebron have become accustomed to the presence of drones flying over the city, he added. Data obtained by facial recognition surveillance technology will be used to supply information to an AI-controlled machine gun equipped with ready-to-fire stun grenades and sponge-tipped bullets, explaining how enforcing the occupation has become easier to sustain via technology.

In some cases, data gathered by surveillance methods are used for Israels policy of targeted assassinations, which are carried without legal processes.

Drones, remote-controlled vehicles in the air (UAV), water or land which usually carry surveillance equipment (mostly cameras), are now being used as armed drones to commit assassinations, Dr Hever elaborated.

Its another form of apartheid. Privacy is only a privilege for Jewish Israeli citizens, but not for the Indigenous population of Palestine, he said.

Western corporations: Buying and selling apartheid

While this technology is developed by the Israeli military internally, the means to do so often comes from foreign aid, notably Western corporations.

None of the technologies discussed here (drones, facial recognition, databases, etc.) is an Israeli invention, Dr Hever said.

Western or transnational corporations have a long history of being complicit in and profiting off Israels apartheid, added Apoorva G, the Asia Pacific campaigns coordinator for the BNC.

From sports companies like Puma, Big Oil corporations like Chevron, and even infrastructure companies, like Siemens and HD Hyundai, they (Big Tech) see oppression of Palestinians as a profitable project, which is related to the economic and environmental damage caused worldwide, Apoorva added.

A recent, more concerning contract between big tech and Israel is Amazons and Googles Project Nimbus - a $1.2 billion agreement that provides cloud services to the Israeli army.

Military attacks depend on servers and digital communication, surveillance entirely relies on such technology, databases storing information on Palestinian land records, population databases they all require cloud servers. All of this is now going to be provided by Google and Amazon. And this project is already underway, Apoorva told The New Arab.

Since 2021, workers at these corporations and human rights organisations have been organising against the contract through the #NoTechForAparthied movement, but their efforts have not led to substantial change.

Sometimes these corporations themselves create weapons and export them to Israeli intelligence, creating a buy-and-sell version of occupation. Sophia Goodfriend, a PhD Candidate at Duke University Anthropology examining the ethics and impact of new surveillance technologies, explains how the tech and defence industries intersect.

The IDF has a long history of outsourcing this R and D (research and development) to private start-ups, largely staffed by veterans of Israeli intelligence units, she said, citing companies like Oosto (formerly AnyVision), the NSO Group, and Black Cube, who have all been contracted to provide technology and services to Israel's military forces.

Global violence and repression

The fact that these systems are imported, bought, or sold has led to fears among researchers and activists about their global reach and impact on human rights.

These technologies are promoted by private Israeli arms companies who are selling them around the world, even in violation of military embargos, Dr Hever elaborated. Just recently it was revealed that Israeli arms companies sell lethal weapons to the Junta in Myanmar, despite the international arms embargo over the ethnic cleansing and genocideof the Rohingya people

We know this because this is the technology which the Israeli arms companies are putting up for sale with the slogan battle-tested, adds Apoorva.

The development of AI technology surveillance in oppressive regimes will make these situations more volatile, especially when sold to existing military and security hierarchies.

The more sophisticated the surveillance mechanisms, the greater their impact in terms of violence and repression is likely to be, Nashif said. The use and abuse of surveillance technologies have led to disproportionate profiling, policing, and the criminalisation of racialised groups worldwide. Palestinians are no exception to these repressive practices.

The global market for autonomous military weapons is also increasing as more and more of these systems get tested on Palestinians. These are global trends, not in just Israel, countries like India, Russia, and the UK, the US are heavily investing in the military application of AI, Shakir says, noting that Israel is one of the top exporters of such weaponry.

As the world becomes increasingly automated, digital rights are at the forefront of conversations within human rights organisations. AI technology, which is never neutral, will be fed with/taught past wrong decisions, reinforcing the bias against racialised communities, Nashif said.

Aina Marzia is an Independent Journalist based in El Paso, Texas. Her work has been seen in The Nation, The Daily Beast, Ms. Magazine, Insider, Teen Vogue, NPR, i_D, and more. When she is not writing Aina organises with the National Student Press Law Center, ACLU, and the UCLA Center for Storytellers and Scholars

Follow her on Twitter:@ainamarzia_

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How AI, big tech, and spyware power Israel's occupation - The New Arab

When system architects sit down to design their next platforms, they start by looking at a bunch of roadmaps from suppliers of CPUs, accelerators, memory, flash, network interface cards and PCI-Express controllers and switches. And the switches are increasingly important in system designs that have a mix of compute and memory types and for clusters that will be sharing components like accelerators and memory.

The trouble is this: The roadmaps are not really aligned well. Most CPU and GPU makers are trying to do major compute engine upgrades every two years, with architectural and process tweaks in the year in between the major launches so they have something new to sell every year. Makers of chips for networking switches and interface cards in the Ethernet and InfiniBand markets tend to be on a two-year cadence as well, and they used to tie their launches very tightly to the Intel Xeon CPU launch cadence back when that was the dominant CPU in the datacenter, but that rhythm has been broken by the constantly redrawn roadmaps from Intel, the re-emergence of AMD as a CPU supplier, and a bunch of other Arm CPU makers, including at least three hyperscalers and cloud builders.

And then there is the PCI-Express bus, which has been all over the place in the past two decades. And while PCI-Express specifications have been released in a more predictable fashion in recent years, PCI-Express controllers have been faithful to the PCI-Express roadmaps but PCI-Express switches are well behind when it comes to product launches from MicroChip and Broadcom.

Sitting here on a quiet July morning, thinking about stuff, we think all of these roadmaps need to be better aligned. And specifically, we think that the PCI-SIG organization that controls the PCI-Express specification and does so through a broad and deep collaboration with the IT industry, needs to pick up the pace and get on a two-year cadence instead of the average of three it has shown in the past two decades. And while we are thinking about it, we think the industry would be better served with a short-cadence jump to PCI-Express 7.0, which needs to be launched as soon as possible to get I/O bandwidth and lane counts in better alignment with high throughput compute engines and what we expect will be an increasing use of the PCI-Express bus to handle CXL-based tiered and shared main memory.

Dont get us wrong. We are grateful that the PCI-SIG organization, a collaboration between all kinds of companies in the datacenter and now at the edge, has been able to get the PCI-Express bus on a predictable roadmap since the very late PCI-Express 4.0 spec was delivered in 2017. There were some tough signaling and materials challenges that kept the datacenter stuck at PCI-Express 3.0 for seven years, and we think Intel, which dominated CPUs at the time and dragged its feet a little bit on boosting I/O because it got burned with SATA ports in the chipsets used with the Sandy Bridge Xeon E5s that came out later than expected in March 2012. Rumors abounded about the difficulties of integrating PCI-Express 4.0 and PCI-Express 5.0 controllers into processors since then.

Generally, a PCI-Express spec is released and then within about a year or so we see controllers embedded in compute engines and network interface chips. So when PCI-Express 4.0 came out in 2017, we saw the first systems using it coming out in 2018 specifically, IBMs Power9-based Power Systems machines, followed by its use in AMD Rome Epyc 7002s launched in August 2019. Intel didnt get PCI-Express 4.0 controllers into its Xeon SP processors until the Ice Lake generation in April 2021.

And even with the short two-year jump to the PCI-Express 5.0 spec in 2019, it wasnt until IBM launched the Power10 processor in its high-end Power E1080 machines in 2021 that it became available in a product. AMD didnt get PCI-Express 5.0 into a server chip until the Genoa Epyc 9004s launched in November 2022 and Intel didnt get PCI-Express 5.0 into a server chip until the Sapphire Rapids Xeon SPs launched in January 2023.

So it was really a three-year cadence between PCI-Express 4.0 and 5.0 products, as expressed in the controllers on the CPUs, even if the spec did a two-year short step.

We think that the specs and the products need to get on a shorter two-year cadence so the compute engines and the interconnects can all be lined up together. And that includes PCI-Express switch ASICs as well, which have traditionally lagged pretty far behind the PCI-Express specs for the 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 generations that they were widely available.

The lag between PCI-Express ports and PCI-Express switches at any given generation are a problem. That delay forces system architects to choose between composability (which ideally uses PCI-Express switches at the pod level) or bandwidth (which is provided through a direct server slot). Systems and clusters need to be designed with both composability and bandwidth and we would add high radix to the mix as well.

At the moment, there are only two makers of PCI-Express switches, Broadcom (through its PLX Technologies acquisition a number of years ago) and MicroChip. We profiled the MicroChip Switchtec ASICs at the PCI-Express 5.0 level way back in February 2021, which scale from 28 to 100 lanes and from 16 to 52 ports, but as far as we know, they are not shipping in volume. Broadcom unveiled its PCI-Express 5.0 chip portfolio back in February 2022, including the ExpressFabric PEX 89100 switch, which has from 24 to 144 lanes and from 24 to 72 ports. We are confirming if these are shipping as we go to press and have not heard back yet from Broadcom.

Our point is that PCI-Express switches have to be available at the same time that the compute servers, memory servers, and storage servers are all going to be created using chips that support any given level of PCI-Express. On Day One, in fact. You have to be able to embed switches in the servers and not lose bandwidth or ports or sacrifice radix to get bandwidth. We therefore need lots of suppliers in case one of them slips. This is one of the reasons why we were trying to encourage Rambus to get into the PCI-Express switch ASIC racket recently.

All of this is top of mind just as the PCI-SIG has put out the 0.3 release of the PCI-Express 7.0 spec.

Lets take a look at the projections we did for the PCI-Express roadmap a year ago when the PCI-Express 6.0 spec was wrapped up and PCI-Express 7.0 appeared on the horizon:

The PCI-Express 7.0 spec is not expected to be ratified until 2025, and that means we wont see it appearing in systems until late 2026 or early 2027. We think this wait is far too long. We need PCI-Express 7.0 to provide the kind of bandwidth accelerators need to chew on an enormous amount of data that is required to run a simulation or train an AI model. We need it matched up with a fully complex CXL 4.0 specification for shared and pooled memory.

We understand that it would be hard to accelerate PCI-Express 7.0 controllers and switches to market, and that all manner of products would also have to be accelerated. Compute engine and peripheral makers alike would be hesitant to not try to squeeze as much investment as possible out of their PCI-Express 6.0 product cycles.

Still, as PCI-Express 6.0 is put into products and goes through its rigorous testing which will be needed because of the new PAM-4 signaling and FLIT low-latency encoding that it makes use of we think the industry should start accelerating and match up to the CPU and GPU roadmaps as best as possible and to get onto a two-year cadence alongside of them.

Get the components in balance and then move ahead all at once, together.

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PCI-Express Must Match The Cadence Of Compute Engines And Networks - The Next Platform

Joel Loynds

Published: 2023-07-05T13:46:15

Updated: 2023-07-05T13:46:24

The Twitters new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, has broken the tension with new reasoning behind the current reading rate limits, which was also posted on their blog.

After a few days of turmoil behind the scenes at Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, the new CEO of the social media company has come forward and issued a statement, which was coupled alongside a blog post regarding the companys plan with rate-limiting users.

The current owner, Elon Musk, announced on July 1 that the platform would limit how many posts users could see before it locked them from seeing anything else.

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This led to Twitter essentially DDOS-ing itself and speculation arose around the $1.5 billion bill it might owe in relation to Google Cloud servers.

Yaccarino has broken her silence on the topic, tweeting her support for the action as means of strengthening the platform.

In the tweet, Yaccarino said:

When you have a mission like Twitter you need to make big moves to keep strengthening the platform.

This work is meaningful and on-going.

Ben Collins, a reporter for NBC News questioned the CEO and official blog post:

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If this were true, which seems extremely unlikely, why wouldnt you warn users first?

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Either another lie, or wildly irresponsible, or both.

Meanwhile, the short statement made on Twitters official blog seems to be reiterating what Musk claims is the reasoning behind the limit. The main reason is that people are scraping data from the site without paying for it.

Twitter has recently clamped down on access to its API and began charging for it.

However, recent reports have indicated that since Musks tenure at Twitter, even those paying for the platform have found it broken.

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Musk has said that the measures are temporary, but weve yet to see the rate limit be alleviated. Meta is currently prepping to launch its competitor, Threads, which launches tomorrow.

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Twitters new CEO finally explains rate limits & what it means - Dexerto