Towards a low-cost sustainable broadband solution in rural areas of low and middle-income countries: Tanzania’s backhaul perspective

Abstract

Although broadband internet has proven to accelerate the fulfilment of the information and communication for development (ICT4D)  agenda, connectivity issues persist in some regions of the world, particularly in rural areas of Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)  which host 93% of the unconnected global population. Due to the lack of economic feasibility in these locations for service providers,  International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been advocating for low-cost sustainable solutions in such areas. Among the  challenging broadband infrastructure segment seems to be the backhaul (middle-mile) as rural areas are remotely located from the  backbone end-points. With Tanzania exemplifying LMICs, this paper presents a Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) to compare the widely  utilized backhaul (Microwave) and the promising Broadband over Power Line (BPL) towards achieving low-cost broadband solutions. To  demonstrate technical viability in terms of capacity, Pathloss and MATLAB were utilized from which both technologies demonstrated the  broadband-suitably capacity (161Mbps for Microwave and 168.99Mbs for BPL). From economic perspective, the Total Cost of Ownership  (TCOs) for both technologies were determined using a Cost Model; BPL fared better as the cost of establishing one microwave link could  have established almost 6 BPL links. Apart from adding to the body of knowledge on TEAs involving backhauls, this paper informs policymakers and other related stakeholders on the potential cost-benefit of BPL towards curbing the existing broadband connectivity  gap.