Economic analysis of a satellite-terrestrial telephony system for rural SADC

The paper presents an economic analysis of a satellite-terrestrial telephony system serving the entire rural sector of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The economic analysis is conducted using a software tool that will enable a designer to specify requirements such as user population, coverage and estimated traffic per person. The program then outputs the cost of the system depending on the input parameters. The program gives an indication of costs related to the entire system and optimisation can be done iteratively using the cost parameter.