Blogging: Now A Capital Intensive Venture With Fast Vanishing Data. The Alternative Starlink Satellite Network May Be A Game Changer
The Oasis Reporters
July 7, 2024
One of Nigeria’s major telecommunications networks, MTNN, has a text message platform titled 323. It’s major duty is to remind the customer of his or her data usage on a daily basis with messages like:
Dear Customer, you don’t have any active data bundle. Please dial *312*1# to buy another data bundle.
Or messages like: SME Data Beneficiary: 4797.05 expires 04/08/2024.
And 312 platform sends messages like:
Y’ello! You have received 5GB data from 234803” “****0530 via MTN Data Share. Click here https://mtnapp.page.link/myMTNNGApp to download the new MyMTN app for free and check out our data bundles plus other exciting offers.
MTNN is yet another platform that would announce your usage:
Y’ello, your data usage for 20-06-2024 is 3338.60MB. To stop this notification dial *312*600#.
Therefore tracking data usage and counting the cost on a daily basis has become so easy. Buying MTN 5000MB data on SMS data share bundle is from 1500 naira above as the least amount some vendors would offer it. There was a time the 5000MB bundle would last for a month. It started vanishing within two weeks, Later it would last a moderate blogger for four days, and now a day, half a day or a day and a half.
As dedicated bloggers, and in our own case, we load all networks, and each day, pick any network with fast uplink at any given location.
Talking specifically about using just MTN network, and assuming that a blogger spends on the average, about one thousand to three thousand naira recharging data on one network a day, the average cost per month would amount to 30,000naira (thirty thousand naira) to sixty to even ninety thousand naira monthly. At times, slightly higher.
Then add the cost of data on the other networks, the average expenditure to put your news out every month would best be imagined, using terrestrial networks.
That is how far inflation has dealt with the business of blogging in bringing out the news to the esteemed reader.
And now consider the offer of the new Starlink SpaceX satellite offer, launched by Elon Musk, and it seems like a better deal.
Starlink has been described as a game-changer for those living, working, and frequently travelling in Nigeria that has some remote areas with no internet penetration.
In Nigeria, the Starlink Hardware is believed to cost about 440,000 naira. Data cost per month is fixed at 38,000 naira per month, and one could connect many devices.
So isn’t it cheaper to connect even as low as ten or twenty devices and no more in an apartment building, either an office or residence (so as not to slow down the speed significantly) ?
With Starlink, one can also connect his or her Satellite television via YouTube and other communication gadgets. All for 38,000 naira monthly.
With each passing day, the ingenuity of Space X engineering is making things more convenient. The Space X Starlink dish is now very portable. Almost the size of an average laptop that can fit into any backpack bag and setting it up anywhere is easy.
With more satellites being launched by the SpaceX engineering team, the satellite network is no longer fixed in one location. Roaming it is easy.
Therefore the game changer is here. The home based terrestrial networks that obey the daily inflationary trend in Nigeria is giving way to Starlink that is up in space and does not readily fluctuate like the Nigerian inflation buffeted economy.
Just act fast and buy your hardware before the price roams very far away.
Greg Abolo
Gregabolo@gmail.com.
