5G ambition: Could Paratus Namibia beat mobile giants at their own game?

When during an African Tech Roundup Podcast chat I suggest Paratus Namibia's 5G ambitions might threaten mobile carriers, managing director Andrew Hall doesn't deflect. He grins.

"Connectivity is a commodity, prices are going down, you need to make up for that revenue in other spaces," he states plainly with a chuckle.

After over 22 years building networks across Namibia, Hall's experience has led him to conclude that long-term commercial sustainability requires poaching customers from adjacent industries.

His fibre company wants mobile subscribers. Banks want payment customers. Mobile operators want banking clients. The territorial boundaries that once defined the telecoms industry are collapsing.

Namibian market lab

Namibia offers a singular testing ground for this theory. With vast distances between sparse population centres, conventional infrastructure economics barely function. At 825 000 square kilometres with only 2.6 million people scattered across it, Namibia is one of the world's least densely populated countries.

Hall describes the challenges bluntly: "If you drive down the road, you'll see three fibres running next to the road. If you're driving from one town to the other, you'll see two or three towers standing next to each other."

What Hall sees as a suboptimal competitive dynamic among state-owned enterprises and private operators results in what he calls duplicated infrastructure, though he declines to detail whether regulatory requirements or technical considerations might justify the redundancy.

Paratus Namibia has thrived by rejecting the status quo. Instead of competing purely on coverage, they pioneered open access services, allowing smaller ISPs without capital budgets to piggyback on their network. 

Whether the move actually enhanced competition as he claims or simply created new revenue streams for Paratus remains unclear, but Hall positions it as a preview of the boundary-crossing strategy now driving their 5G plans.

The company’s 2018 transition from Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) to fibre illustrates Hall's approach to technology timing. WiMAX is a wireless communication technology designed to provide high-speed broadband Internet access over long distances, typically up to 30 to 50 kilometers.

Rather than sweating assets until inevitable failure, Paratus switched when customer bandwidth demands (4-10 Mbps was "just not sufficient anymore") threatened retention. The decision prioritised customer relationships over sunk costs.

Skills constraints

Hall's territorial expansion faces a key challenge: constraints in Namibia's skills landscape. "We don't have the luxury of one person specialising in one specific thing," he explains. "You need to have a very broad understanding of the field that you're operating in because most times you need to cover more than one specific topic."

He reckons that, by necessity, Namibian internet connectivity professionals develop a breadth of expertise: understanding network infrastructure, customer service, regulatory compliance, and business development simultaneously. Paratus is hoping to convert this limitation into a competitive advantage as they enter mobile markets. 

Hall believes that companies like Paratus, operating in resource-constrained markets like Namibia, could outmanoeuvre traditional specialists. Banks entering telecoms face steep learning curves around network management. Mobile operators venturing into financial services struggle with regulatory complexity. 

By this logic, firms built from necessity to understand multiple domains should move more fluidly between sectors.

Revenue realities

The revenue pressures reflect broader challenges facing African infrastructure players. Connectivity pricing faces constant downward pressure while infrastructure costs remain fixed. Companies must either scale dramatically (particularly difficult in sparse populations) or diversify revenue sources (easier but requiring new capabilities).

Covid-19 provided unexpected validation. Paratus's consumer business "did very, very well" in Namibia as connectivity shifted from convenience to necessity. People became "100% reliant, work-wise, education-wise, entertainment-wise" on internet access. The experience demonstrated that infrastructure companies controlling essential services can expand into adjacent markets during crisis moments.

Now, even as oil discoveries are reshaping Namibian economics, attracting foreign investment and spurring a general sense of optimism across the country, Hall expects the country's strict immigration laws to maintain critical skills development pressure on local businesses looking to acquire new customer segments.

Dissolving boundaries

Paratus Namibia's 5G ambitions represent more than technology upgrade; they signal what the company sees as strategic recognition that established telecoms boundaries no longer hold. Mobile operators built businesses around spectrum scarcity and handset control. But when fibre network operators can offer wireless services and banks can provide digital wallets, competitive advantages become temporary.

The broader pattern extends across African markets. South African challenger banks-turned-market leaders like Capitec build mobile capabilities. Kenyan mobile operators create banking subsidiaries. Ethiopian fintechs partner with incumbent banks whilst competing for payment customers. Companies seem to be discovering that customer acquisition costs less than customer defence (which is often impossible anyway) when competitors cross traditional boundaries.

Regulatory frameworks struggle to adapt. Most African telecoms and financial services regulation assumes clear distinctions between infrastructure providers, service operators, and financial institutions. But firms like Paratus blur these categories by design, testing regulatory dispensations and pressuring updates to industry policy.

Execution test

Doubtless, whether Hall's territorial expansion succeeds depends on execution rather than strategy. He maintains that Paratus Namibia has built credibility through consistent infrastructure investment ("putting the money back into infrastructure") and reliable service delivery ("growing off the back of competitors' customer churn").

Their open access model demonstrated the ability to cooperate with competitors when beneficial. And the company's 75% enterprise, 25% consumer split has previously provided revenue stability during key transitions.

But mobile markets operate differently from fibre networks. Customer acquisition requires different skills. Network management faces new technical challenges. Regulatory compliance becomes more complex. Success demands adapting those "jack of all trades" capabilities to unfamiliar contexts whilst maintaining core business performance.

More broadly, Hall's gambit tests how African digital infrastructure companies can successfully challenge legacy territories, or whether expansion dilutes focus and weakens core operations.

One thing appears certain, though. Traditional divisions between infrastructure, services, and applications are dissolving under revenue pressure, consumer market shifts and from competitive necessity. Providers that adapt and execute effectively should be well-placed to thrive in the next phase of African digital connectivity development.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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