OPEN ACCESS SAT3
By Eric M.K Osiakwan
Visiting Fellow and Scholar
DV Program, Stanford University
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/eric/
For the records, SAT3 was established with an exclusivity period to recoup investment by the historic operators and this is due in April 2007 at which the SAT3 country governments can either entrench the exclusivity of the historic operators or consider other mechanisms such as what an proposing. SAT3 stands both as a pillar of hope and despair for the African continent; hope because it was the first cable and there is an opportunity for it to significantly change bandwidth prices based on it’s non-performance, despair because we may decide to keep things the way they are currently and continue with the incumbency and high bandwidth prices.
The reasons for the non-renewal of the exclusivity range from, the historic operators haven recouped their investment in the cable at high cost since the inception of the cable and yet made fiber bandwdith more expensive than satellite capacity. Secondly we know that the loan granted by the WorldBank to the historic operators for their contribution to the SAT3 cable was guaranteed by their respective governments hence the onus lies with the government after supporting the private interest of the historic operators to now consider the public interest of providing cheap and affordable bandwidth for socio-economic development.
If the SAT3 goverrnments and regulators collectively or individually decide to end the exclusivity in April 2007 then the question to me is, what steps should they take towards Open Accessing SAT3? I don’t hold monopoly on the steps and process because national and or regional relationships coupled with on the ground details must be taken into consideration but I would proceed to outline what I see as the larger framework of what is possible in terms of structure, principles and processes – same as for the EASSy cable. Hopefully other cables or subsequent ones would adopt or follow the same strucure, principles and process to have the desired impact.
For the records again, I applaud the work done by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA @ www.osiwa.org) and other institutions for not only holding two (2) workshops to discuss the SAT3 issues but bringing a community of engagement, culture of awareness of the issues at stake and channelling internal capacity within the various constituencies ie governments, regulators, private sector, educational institutions and Civil Society to understand whatever decisions they make regarding the cable. My effort in this paper is to compliment such efforts with an adoption that considers some elements and layout a general framework based on the several discussions and engagements.
Declaring SAT3 an “essential facility” would mean that it holds much in the public interest so must be treated with the public good as primary and other consideration as secondary. Private consideration would be first on the secondary ladder because that is important for the running of the public entity. Am not for once suggesting a move from an extreme private position to an extreme public consideration, but rather my suggestion is to use minimal public holding as a temporal measure to move from an exteme private interest to a balance between the private and public consideration. Open Access is about balance and consideration of the various interests.
The governments holding the essential facility in trust after declaring it so is only a temporary measure which must be seeded quickly to a multi-stakeholder institution which would work in the interest of the various constituency and ensure that there is a clear reflection of equity. Regulatory and public policy must recognise the establishment of the essenttial facility which in this case would be “infrastructure provider” – providing infrastructure for the other service providers wthin the value chain.
In some cases the regulatory and public policy environment must create the structural change from a vertical to a horizontal layering communication system and that enables the change process. Whatever the case may be, the first fundamental step is the re-alignment of the communication paradigm where there is a distinction between infrastructure and services. This means a move from the vertical to the horizontal communication system. The essential facility in this case, the SAT3 country segment would constitute the infrastructure provider which DOES NOT provide services on the value chain. Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal has hinted that they are going to adopt this approach post April 2007. In the case of Ghana, the government has also contracted the Chinese to finalise the nationwide fiber network which was owned by the Volta River Authority called Voltacom. Voltacom would be merged with the SAT3 country segment to form an “infrastructure provider” which would provider international and national bandwidth infrastructure.
Owership of the infrastructure provider is the next consideration, enjoining a multi-stakeholder ownership model ensures that there is balance of power, money and interest. It is in the interest of the government to ensure that this happens so that they are not labeled as “corrupting” the entity. The mechanism is for the government through an initial private and or public offering to invite the private sector, educational institutions, civil society, investors, PTTs and the consumer to own a part of this entity through a transparent and neutral process. Enlisting the infrastructure provider on the stock exchange would ensure that it is subject to the dictates of that environment ensuring access and commonality on ownership.
SAT3 at this point would have adhered to Open Access in terms of the structural change below;