By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Perhaps the most surprising winner of a Wi-Fi NOW Award this year was Tanzania’s Habari Node. The ISPs combination of fibre, Wi-Fi, MPLS, and corporate services is a Cinderella Story in its own right with its roots harking all the way back to 1994. Today the company is on a strong growth trajectory driven by just the right mix of quality services and low-cost technology.
“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Home Alone'”? That’s Habari Node Chairman & CEO Erik Rowberg’s tongue-in-cheek answer to how the company got standard. Supposedly ‘abandoned’ by his family and left to his own devices in Tanzania, he tried his hand at farming but eventually founded a dial-up-based Internet and email service. That was in 1994. Today the company delivers Wi-Fi services to 1500 clients – many of them businesses – across inland Tanzania and even over vast distances.
The company is headquartered in Arusha, which – as the gateway to iconic Serengeti National Park and Mount Kilimanjaro – is Tanzania’s ground zero for safari and trekking tourism. Most of the company’s revenues come from serving business in the city but Habari Node also also owns microwave radio transmission links traversing hundreds of miles of bush to reach lodges and resorts in the Serengeti and even at the Ngorongoro Crater.
Habari Node prides itself on delivering stable, high-quality Wi-Fi for the most part backhauled by its own fibre network, the length of which currently stands at 200 km. Where Habari Node itself doesn’t provide the coverage or connection – for example in the capitol Dar Es Salaam – the company partners with other ISPs (and uses MPLS technology) to make sure that capitol branch offices can be served within the same services contract, explains Habari Node’s General Manager, Kabaza Runyeta.
“We take a lot of pride in being a ‘home grown’ Tanzanian telco and Wi-Fi provider. We of course deliver all the high-quality corporate services but it’s also important to us to support our local communities, including our schools. Right now we’ve connected 35 school computer labs, and we’re also providing free Wi-Fi for college ICT training, for example. All of this is to give back to the community and to grow local ICT capabilities,” says Kabaza Runyeta.
Currently, Habari Node offers services in Arusha, Dodoma, Mwanza, and Kilimanjaro regions and plans to expand their currently small presence in the Dar es Salaam (capitol) area with more own towers, Kabaza Runyeta explains. Corporate connectivity services start at US$70 per month for 5 Mbps and up to 2 GB per day, although unlimited data is available from 6 pm to 8 am.
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Habari Node is financed in part by Connectivity Capital, an investment fund focused on expanding Internet access in so-called ‘frontier markets’ including in Africa and Asia. The fund was formed by veteran wireless expert and investor Jim Forster and experienced African investor Ben Matranga. Connectivity Capital today also supports wireless ISPs such as AirJaldi in India and TooMuchWiFi in South Africa.
/Claus.