MAP > Internet Providers in South Sudan

After a referendum, the oil-rich South Sudan went ahead and gained independence from Sudan, and in the year 2011, it became an independent nation. After being deprived of various investment for many decades, it went on, and it inherited one of the least developed internet and telecommunications market in the world, while there are another infrastructure has been lamentably poor. Despite this creating various investment opportunities for the infrastructure as well as service providers, such developments have largely depended on the negotiated end to be protracted by a civil war that erupted in the year 2013 and which has caused bloodshed and mayhem, and in particular the oil-producing regions.

With civic struggle exacerbated by the large scale famine, the investors in all the economic sectors have been grounded. At one time, there was investment activity among the mobile network operators who were seeking to grow their networks in some of the areas of this country by the late 2016, both the Zain South Sudan and the MTN South Sudan cutting their workforce so as to reduce the operating costs, while falling subscriber base have strained when it comes to the total revenue that they make. Zain South Sudan hasrecorded some losses in terms of finance in the year 2015 as well as in the year 2016.

The operators in this sector, like the others in various markets, have been placing some survival tactics and they have been hopeful for the political settlement as well as a return to some degree of social stability. The MTN has reported a 14% decline in some subscribers in the year 2017 with some severe decline in the revenue. Both the Zain as well as the MTN have seen subscriber base increase in the year 2018 as they get to absorb customers that had migrated to the Vivacell after this company was shut down for the failure in paying their taxes.

At just 12% penetration, being the lowest in the African region, this country mobile market has many years of potential growth ahead of it, despite there being some premise on the resolution to a politicalcrisis as well as recovery of country’s economy. Virtually untapped internet, as well as broadband market, also does depend to a huge extent on the country’s gaining access to international fiber optic cables as well as on the national backbone network in operation. The sophisticated infrastructure solutions are essentialreaching 80% of the total population that lives outside the urban centers.