Augere is gearing up to launch its wireless broadband service in East Africa later this year. To get an update on this and Augere's other plans for the future we caught up with Paul Franklin, Augere's Director of Spectrum and Regulation, to find out more about Augere's progress in acquiring spectrum and expanding its global footprint.

Remind us about Augere's criteria for selecting new territories for operations:

Augere rigorously assesses a series of characteristics in every country to calculate their suitability for Augere's brand of fast, reliable broadband. High amongst these criteria are countries which currently have a low level of broadband availability; reasonable levels of mobile penetration which usually indicates a latent demand for broadband and a low level of fixed telephone line penetration.

Where does Augere currently have spectrum?

Obviously Augere not only has spectrum, but has flourishing businesses operating under the Qubee brand in Pakistan and Bangladesh, with access to more than 300m potential customers in those countries alone. Augere also has licenses in Uganda and Rwanda and is actively pursuing spectrum to form an East African cluster of countries to include Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Zambia. This would give Augere access to another 100m customers in Africa. We are also currently participating in the Indian BWA auctions and are looking to obtain cost effective spectrum in that country. Augere also continues to look further afield at other geographies which satisfy the criteria outlined above.

The businesses in Bangladesh and Pakistan are growing daily. What about Uganda and Rwanda?

In Uganda we have a pilot network up and running in central Kampala. We are carrying out friendly user testing on the network and the results look very promising. We expect to have a full commercial launch in Uganda later this year.

In Rwanda we are concluding site acquisition negotiations and are in the process of deploying a similar network to that in Uganda. Launch in Rwanda is expected to follow shortly after that in Uganda. The advantage of this arrangement is that we will able to leverage the same network infrastructure across Uganda and Rwanda, providing the most cost effective and efficient solution for our customers. We are in the process of recruiting local staff across all functions including marketing, finance, technical, customer care and sales and distribution.

Why is the time right to launch now in East Africa?

The main challenge with deploying high speed broadband in East Africa has been the lack of high capacity bandwidth. Until recently there were no submarine cables into East Africa. That changed with the arrival of the Seacom cable which recently reached Kampala. It is only now that it is possible to provide high broadband capacity at a low cost, two essential components of our business proposition. Other cables will soon be landing in Kenya and Tanzania which will further improve the broadband capacity into East Africa.

There are other broadband operators in East Africa. How will Augere be different?

Augere, operating under the Qubee brand, has gained valuable experience of deploying and operating wireless broadband networks in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Qubee is building a reputation based on providing a reliable, affordable wireless broadband service backed up with exceptional customer care. By launching in a number of neighbouring countries in East Africa simultaneously we can leverage the infrastructure to provide a scalable and cost effective solution for all of the territories. This will mean a better product, available at an attractive price to all of our customers.