Connectivity is infrastructure, not a discretionary purchase.
Commerce, government services, education, job applications and banking all now assume a connection. A community without one is placed at a real, structural disadvantage next to a neighbouring community that has it. Nowhere is that clearer than in South Africa, where connected and unconnected communities often sit a few kilometres apart, living very different economic realities.
Coucal is a telecommunications consulting practice built around closing that gap. Since 2006 we have worked alongside community networks, ISPs and industry bodies across the UK, the Netherlands, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa — on the ground, with the operators who actually build and run the networks.
Twenty years on the ground
Two decades of African telecommunications experience, building community networks across the continent. The work has always started with the operators and the communities, not with a slide deck.
Models that pay for themselves
Coucal began as not-for-profit work. That was a good place to learn, but it could not scale. Getting people online at the scale the problem demands needs a model that is profitable, rather than one that depends on grant cycles and donor goodwill.
Research that holds up
We publish the analysis behind our thinking — who actually pays for connectivity, what happens when households can no longer afford it, and how the affordability gap looks across two continents.
Gamifying access to wifi, instead of subsidizing it.
Free-to-play mobile games earn their keep from an ad watched to keep playing. We think connectivity can work the same way by trading attention or data for credited access, without a bill, a subsidy, or a new law.
Read the full concept →"A single mobile network or ISP could build this and launch it commercially, alone, today, with no new legislation."
The research behind the argument
Three pieces on who pays for connectivity, what happens when people can no longer afford it, and how the gap looks at continental scale.
Who really pays for you being online?
You pay the broadband bill, the phone contract, the router and the electricity that keeps it running. The moment you go online, at least seven different groups quietly benefit from the fact that you did — and only one of them ever sees an invoice. A look at the seven beneficiaries, the single payer, and the ways that mismatch could plausibly be fixed.
Read the piece → United KingdomPriced out: how the cost of being online is pushing Britain into poverty
Rising consumer credit, Debt Relief Orders, food bank demand, and the households that never switch provider. Four UK data trends that each tell a separate story about financial strain — and one story when you read them next to each other.
Read the piece → Africa & EuropeThe next digital divide is continental
As of 2025, 92% of Europe's population uses the internet. In Africa it is 36%. The gap is closing in relative terms — Africa went from 181 million users in 2014 to 646 million in 2024 — while the absolute number of unconnected people keeps growing. Why that makes affordability a geopolitical question.
Read the piece →