
YC W17 Launch: Wifi.com.ng – Uncapped ISP for Africa - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w17-launch-wifi-com-ng/
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curiousgal
How about we replace "Africa" with "Select African Countries". This is as odd
as a company saying "Uncapped ISP for Europe"; it's an _entire_ continent!

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spooky_action
Yes, the tendency to label Africa as if it were a country (rather than 54 of
them) is highly annoying. Clearly this won't be available for me
(Zimbabwe/South Africa)

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Semaphor
Not to mention that most ISPs in SA offer uncapped (if shaped) internet.

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hienyimba
Oh My. Never knew something like this existed, Similar to Wifi Dabba which was
here a few days ago. As a Nigerian, this will definitely make life a whole lot
easier but a particular Achilles heel for startups in your line of business is
pricing. What do you charge? and how do you intend to convince Nigerians that
you are better than the likes of Spectranet, Swift, mainone, telcos like Glo,
Mtn etc

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
We charge $100 for setup and $30 monthly subscription. WRT convincing
Nigerians, our product sells itself as we offer unlimited internet with no
caps.

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azernik
To whom does your product sell itself? ie, for the average (including less
central/wealthy cities) Nigerian, this is about 10% of income.

Is Lagos just that much wealthier than the rest of the country? Is there a
wealthy professional subset that can afford this? Or is it mostly business
users who need lots of bandwidth?

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madradavid
The title here is misleading (I am from Uganda, was excited ), this service
seems to be aimed at Nigeria (only Lagos at that) , see the .ng .

Could the OP or Mods please change this to a less catchy and more accurate
title like `Uncapped ISP for Lagos` .

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jacquesm
You guys should try to get NGO's as customers to provide them connectivity at
Western rates and use the surplus income to subsidize the local customers.

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
This is something we could explore.

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trome
I'd avoid NGOs, if you look over at DSLReports you'll see NGOs complaining
about the free connectivity they get, and their ISPs chiming in about how its
costing them a couple grand a month to supply a few Mbps to them since they
slam the connection 24/7.

Costs are high and anything less than perfect, low latency connectivity
supporting 20+ HD Skype calls is unacceptable results in NGOs bitching about
the service they get for free.

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qq66
They are probably "bitching" because they are struggling against titanic
obstacles when many of them could have cushy desk jobs in Indianapolis. If an
ISP wants to help them, it would be to participate in their mission, not just
to avoid "complaining."

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imjustsaying
A common theme for expats: if you're there _only_ for the money, you're gonna
have a bad time.

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JamilD
I couldn't see any info about the founders or their company on the website,
but it looks like the company is Tizeti Network Services, founded by Kendall
Ananyi and Ifeanyi Okonkwo: [https://www.tizeti.com/](https://www.tizeti.com/)

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
The company website is [https://www.tizeti.com](https://www.tizeti.com) and
the customer-facing one is [http://www.wifi.com.ng](http://www.wifi.com.ng).

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koolba
Very cool! Many of us have dreamed of doing this in the USA. Seeing it done in
Africa where it meets an actual neeed rather than just a hacker fantasy is
particular cool!

How are the nodes connected? Is it a mesh?

How about the backhaul? How's that handled and is it still under the control
of the telcos?

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
It's not a mesh. We do a point to point between towers and then a point to
multi point to customers. Mesh halves throughput, so we stayed away from it.

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trome
Single radio meshes halve throughput, but a multi-radio mesh does not have
that same hop speed halving effect.

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callalex
Or you could bond the two radio channels and have twice the throughput, which
is effectively the same thing as halving the throughput vs equipment and
spectrum costs.

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flashman
> One of the top 3 infrastructure challenges in Africa is internet
> connectivity (the other 2 are electricity and healthcare).

What about roads and water? "According to a report for the World Bank, average
road density on the continent is 204 kilometres of road per 1000 square
kilometres of land area – only a quarter of which is paved. In contrast, the
world average is 944 kilometres per 1000 square kilometres with more than half
paved." [1]

Not that I expect a YC company to solve African roads...

[1]
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129512-800-africas-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129512-800-africas-
road-building-frenzy-will-transform-continent/)

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spullara
With enough electricity, healthcare and internet there isn't nearly as much
need for roads and water.

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jychang
I'm sorry, but need for basic infrastructure like WATER does not disappear
when you receive internet and electricity.

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dvanduzer
enough electricity lets you desalinate, DUH

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dpc59
desalination requires infrastructure, and most of the water needs are in
places like the sahel which are super far from the sea, the problem isn't
desalination, it's that there's no water in the ground in some geographic
locations

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azernik
Holy shit. 30% coverage for a city the size of Lagos is _already_ an
impressive success.

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
Thanks. We intend to cover the entire city of Lagos.

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trome
How do you intend to get roof rights to do so? I'd be adverse to using roofs
without a roof access agreement, otherwise whenever a customer moves, your apt
to lose a node & its coverage/the sites it relays bandwidth for.

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bairrd
I know Lagos has wifi enabled kiosks on the street, for downloading movies
from a Netflix style subscription service, so I suspect they are doing
something similar to that, instead of rooftop access.

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martinald
What's the backhaul from one of these base stations? And what sort of real
world speeds are people getting?

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
Right now we are doing 300Mbps on the backhaul. People get 7.5Mbps burstable
to 15Mbps but the equipment can support up to 75Mbps per user.

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byoung2
The 300Mbps connection doesn't come from the local telcos or their
subsidiaries?

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marco1
Pricing seems to be about 48 USD for setup and 31 USD per month for the
service [1]. Is that correct?

Edit: The currency, the naira, lost quite a bit of its value last June [2]
when the central bank allowed for it to become (more) market-driven [3].

[1] [http://wifi.com.ng/pricing/](http://wifi.com.ng/pricing/)

[2]
[http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=NGN&to=USD&view=1Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=NGN&to=USD&view=1Y)

[3]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-14/nigeria-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-14/nigeria-
central-bank-to-announce-new-currency-policy-wednesday)

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sparkling
Sounds quite expensive considering the average monthly household income in
Nigeria is less than 280 USD.

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vezycash
$280 is outdated. And too optimistic.

Right now at N400 per dollar (it was 450 barely a month ago), $280 is 112,000
naira. Top earning high school teachers get N50k monthly. Entry level bankers
get N70k. I know an accountant for a media house (Masters in finance) who
earns N80 and works 10 hours per day for six days a week.

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azundo
Congrats! We're based in Uganda and dealing with Internet is a huge pain point
for us - we have a backup provider because reliability is so poor and we're
paying much more than $30 USD/month. All the best and hope you expand Eastward
soon!

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
East Africa is on our road map. So we'd be seeing you

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anubisresources
Can't wait! Whats the timeline look like? Prices out here are insane

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orliesaurus
Best of luck folks! Looks like a super cool problem to solve and work on!

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
Thanks! We have been at this at a while and hope to solve the connectivity
issue in Africa.

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mino
What equipment/tech are you using for the point-multipoint segment?

Good luck! Although, if I'm honest I fail to see the "YC-grade" innovation in
this project versus the myriad of WISPs that have been so popular for more
than a decade. Does it all boils down to the unmetered business model?

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EGreg
What do you mean, uncapped?

So the user can consume any amount of data from the global internet?

How do you manage that?

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vezycash
This is the most important question. Answering this on their site / sales
materials will boost conversion than any other thing I can think of.

The next question is, "What areas of Lagos have coverage?"

Their site doesn't say. Only gives pictures of buildings of their customers.

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simplyinfinity
Uh... I hate it very much when companies claim "uncapped" data. While they
don't artificially limit how much data you can use, you are always limited by
your speed.

Yes, your data is unlimited but but your speed of 128k limit how much you can
actually use. In this case, after a short chat with their online reps they
offer 2-5 mbits. At 5 mbits this translates to roughly 1.6 Terabytes of data
over 30 day period.

Don't get me wrong, what they are doing seems great! I just wish they would
show their speeds upfront and the download/upload ratio.

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gkop
This is really cool. Is the tech similar to MonkeyBrains? MonkeyBrains charges
$35/month and pays their technicians Bay Area wages. I'm sure there are good
reasons why you can't drive the price down lower than $30, but they are not
obvious. It it just to manage demand as you get off the ground? Is the
upstream fee extremely expensive? Something else?

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IfeanyiOkonkwo
Upstreams are still lower than what they would get on enterprize on our
competitors network. We can actually drive our cost below $30 however most
important for us our goal is to build out our network that's essentially what
our raise is for

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truetaurus
Why is this trending? It is nothing new. This has been ongoing in many african
countries for years

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guftagu
I fail to see a competitive edge for this company? If providing uncapped
internet is profitable at those rates, can't the existing telecom providers
just start offering uncapped plans? That renders the whole point of this
company moot.

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JusticeJuice
Not really - it gives you a chance to grab market share. Even if the
competition catches up, you can have already gotten a lot of loyal customers.

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hueving
This is really risky because it takes so little for competition to catch up.
They just offer another pricing tier in their billing system that shuts off
caps and they are done.

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terramars
How would you compare your service to Express Wifi (or similar), is it
competitive or does it serve a different market segment? I'm also curious how
you manage forex risk and the regulatory system there.

