Internet connectivity has proved an issue on the African continent of late. We’re not talking about cost, coverage, or penetration, but rather a disruption to the subsea cables that service most of the region.

Whether it be a mistake, geopolitical tensions, slow repair times, or simply a lack of alternatives, connectivity on the continent appears to be a growing concern, especially given how many industries and sectors of society are reliant on the internet day-to-day.

It is here that satellites may have a role to play, according to Rhys Morgan (pictured below), regional VP for EMEA media and networks sales at Intelsat.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites in particular could prove valuable, Morgan explained recently when speaking with Hypertext.

He is careful to stress, however, that satellites are not a replacement to the current subsea cables system that the African continent is reliant upon. Instead they should be viewed as a complement, a fall back for situations like the ones that recently occurred.

When local networks, operators, and service providers try to find workarounds, it is at this point that satellite connectivity can assist.

Much like the multi-layered approach that businesses adopt in tackling cybersecurity, connectivity should also employ a mix of technologies In order to prove most effective, especially as Africa is not like Europe, Asia, or the United States, where a one-size-fits-all model could adopted.

With more options comes greater resilience, Morgan emphasises.

“The subsea cables have massive capacity and a highly sophisticated backup network, so we’re not saying that we can replace these. We can, however be highly complementary,” he stated from the outset.

“Whether it’s for an enterprise business that has critical data that it cannot afford any sort of interruption to, they may take a satellite link as an alternate backup, satellite can play a really effective role. This is only in the context of building a hybrid network though, so we can put services up quickly for customers if needed, but we’d always encourage customers to think about several different technologies, and then designing and building a network,” Morgan explained.

Here he continues to point out that businesses should not be reliant on one technology only, and here he highlighted a specific solution that Intelsat offers to customers.

“Our multi-orbit strategy, where we want to take the best of what OneWeb has to offer, along with our own GEO fleet, or any other operators in certain circumstances. We’ll then try to pull together a solution and then try to deliver to the customer in a way that they don’t have to worry about the ingredients, they just get the final meal if you like.” he illustrated.

“The issues with the cables recently and a couple of weeks ago in the Red Sea, for me, just highlights the importance of thinking in that hybrid manner, so that if you do experience outages on one of your carrier technologies, hopefully you have other options there so you can at least deal with the mission critical and sensitive data without any significant interruptions,” Morgan continued.

On this very aspect he alluded to the fact that Intelsat is in talks with several operators in terms of setting up sub-national links in order to more effectively re-route or find alternative measures when subsea cables experience issues.

“Our recommendation will always be not to wait until you have an incident to pick up the phone. Think about building that reliance into your network when you’re designing it, so at conception, think about the what ifs? The most resilient or robust network deployments, always take that into account,” he shared.

“A mix of fibre other terrestrial, wireless, and satellite, and you’re probably taking advantage of the best that all of those have to offer,” he concluded.

While there is clearly no cure-all when it comes to ensuring connectivity, no matter how robust and trusted a singular solution may be, as Morgan has detailed, having a mix of solutions is always best, covering any and all eventualities.

As such, if satellites are not part of the mix right now, the recent episode involving subsea cables shows precisely why they should be.