Financial Results

Applying a combination of the actual financial data from Supernet along with the assumptions to the business model spreadsheet (Shown at Appendix J) allowed financial outcomes to be predicted for different combinations of business scale and Internet café utilization.

Figure 25 shows that the capital requirement to provide 80 Internet café seats is only 50% more than providing 20 seats.  The costs per seat are clearly much lower in a larger facility.  If the developing world moves to broadband use on a large scale, it can therefore be expected that Internet cafés will, on average, be much larger than the current norms. 

Figure 26 shows the dramatic additive effect of scale and utilization together on Profit and Loss.  If the assumptions applied in this model are correct, then the tipping point into profitability occurs somewhere around  40 users and 50% utilization.

Figures 27 and 28 express the same principles, but in terms of months to breakeven and percentage return on investment.  Interpolating the breakeven data, it looks as thought the goal of 18 months might be met at somewhere around 50 users and 45% utilization.  The return on investment goal is not met unless the scale is even larger and the utilization is relatively high.

These results suggest that it will be difficult to bring a viable broadband business into smaller towns and villages as there simply will not be sufficient potential users to sustain the scale and utilization levels that are necessary.

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