All: We have been fooled for very long by these companies. Take the last known CCK internet users data 1.5 million, if they actually supplied clean bandwidth at the internationally accepatable parallel sharing ration if 1:100. That is for every 1 MB a maximum of 100 share it, they calculate how much band width the telcos should be purchasing internatioanally, but they don't. Result, Hundreds of thousands of users are made to share very narrow bandwidths--> all connnected "parallel", and they are told there you have it 32/32, 64/64, 128/128 etc among others. Mobile ones purchase time-based bandwidth ( as opposed to volume or kilobytes traffic) Then they decide they should bill consumers by the packet, Quite lucrative making money out of air dont you think? Internationally recommended contention ratios are not followed locally and I have had very serious opposition to educating consumers to demand what ratio their ISP follows. Of course CCK should have offered leadership here.... Expecting them to disclose this is like asking voluntary elimination of super profits. Would you not like to have below speeds (e.g. a true 128 up and down link at 19,000?) Well, again you cannot have because CCK wont allow you, because of the market licensing, because investors would complain, because fibre is coming, because international VOIP would adversly affect other "dorminant" players, becuase...... consumers should not enjoy low prices? Below are the prices available from satellites out there , and all the while we keep blaming "high satellite costs". It is not true and in any case fibre will not reach every Wanjiku in every next year in a snap. We need ISPs to purchase bandwidth from any carrier. We want competition not closed (to) competition markets. <http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm> Outbound speed from 128 kbps to 2048 kbps. Inbound speed from 36 kbps to 153 kbps > Service price starting at 147 /month for 128 kbps > Special new subscription of 100 per 1 GB with 2 Mbit/s, to be spent in 3 months > Many different subscription choices (25) including shared unlimited, shared quota and leased line. Very high quality service and QoS management Kai: There is a trick some infrastructure companies are using to fool consumers to sign up to bad agreements. See below:- IPTV And Home Television Offerings Are Telcos Best Stealth Solution To Bypass Any Net Neutrality Resistance: Wake Up by: Robin Good http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/01/29/iptv_and_home_television_offer... In this article I report about the very negative experience of installing the newest Internet high-speed offering cum IPTV solution in my home as to avoid others not only the same frustrations and the waste of time and money, but also to share the fact that what many may still perceive as an upgrade offer to their Internet connectivity, is nothing else but your own very unconscious capitulation to net neutrality, as well as your official consent to install a proprietary IPTV system at your premises. <snip> A telecom company, who is also a large Internet provider, needs only a little marketing campaign to convince its users and potential clients that with about $50 a month they can get the most unique offer to come around in recent times: super-high- speed Internet access, (the customer representative who called me to explain this offer and clarify any doubts said specifically 20 Mbps), home television channels with free and pay-per-view content including movies and live sports, and even a video-phone! <snip> IPTV is nothing else but the ability of your provider to have you buy into a mix of Internet access and private DRMed content for which it installs dedicated reception/decoding equipment at your end. By doing this you basically give up into a partnership into which your Internet provider is basically serving itself a reserved channel and abundant bandwidth to have you see and pay for this premium content. Further, the telco locks you into having to use its own equipment (as mentioned my old standard ADSL modem does not work anymore - as mentioned, I have basically upgraded myself into a "proprietary network" without realizing it - and the telco has created a "de facto" proprietary dedicated IPTV infrastructure and delivery channel to my home/office). The moment you realize this, you should also realize how you yourself have now sold your line to the very enemy of net neutrality. You have sold and paid for a telco that will devote the greatest and better part of the bandwidth you have supposedly leased, to serve to you its own very content. (A little slower internet surfing will not be noticeable when most of you have already been long spoiled by bad and inconsistent service from these very companies.) The telco can therefore boast the delivery of a bandwidth it is in fact reserving for the greatest part for its commercial interests while serving you with just the same bandwidth (or less) you were getting before. In this scenario, you and I become the very unconscious allies to these companies while providing them with the very means to install and deploy their own private IPTV delivery infrastructure into our homes. Mucheru, The cost of internet would drop this afternoon, if CCK wanted that to happen. I have a very serious problem with licensing layers upon layers of local bandwidth resellers and I wonder what "processing" they actually do. Because we are competing with India wrt outsourcing, consider their below case. I hope after reading it you will all understand why there is an very big need to ensure the cable benefits in this order 1. Consumer 2. Entrepreneurs (especially local after the Institute of Economic Affairs study that sought to find out if liberalising Kenya's telecoms benefitted locals. (my guess is that CKK auctions consumers to highest bidder) INDIA: The ISP services were a monopoly of the earstwhile government owned International carrier, VSNL from 1995 onwards. These services were opened up for private sector competition in November 1998. In the 3 years, that the Internet services were a monopoly, there were only 250,000 subscribers in India. The licenses that were introduced in Nov 1998 (internet telephony was disallowed at that time), were kept free of any license fee obligations. Bank Guarantees were only required to be submitted, to ensure Licensees started services within 18-24 months. From 2003, the license fee was to be a nominal amount of Rupee 1.0 only (just about 2 cents). VSNL had a state guaranteed monopoly on international connectivity till 2004 (was however done away with in 2002 and coincided with opening up of restricted Internet Telephony through an amended ITSP license). A virtual Zero license fee, along with provisions allowing ISPs to set up their own last mile links, setting up of International Satellite Gateways and later Submarine Cable links, thus allowing ISPs to connect through any carrier of his choice, resulted in more than 750 licenses that were granted between 1998 and 2005. About 350 ISP licenses still exist today. Intense competition was thus introduced and coupled with a fall in Domestic and Internatinonal bandwith prices gradually, saw the Internet Subscriber base rise up phenomenally from 250,000 only to 8.6 million subscriber base (as of Sept 2006). In addition to growth and penetration of Internet increasing, subscribers gained through massive price reductions, introduction of various valued services and currently India has some ambitious targets for Internet/Broadband going further. Kai Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote: Hmm ... we had only 2 years of free market ... All infrastructure must be put in place and somehow it needs to be paid for. I know some ISPs are selling Butterfly unlimited for 3000 KSH a month! ADSL2+ is around the corner (saw offers for 5000 inclusive of TV .. ). For sure speeds are not what they could be with submarine cable .. now we are back to DAY1. Kai ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lucy Kimani" To: Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:43 Subject: Re: [Kictanet] Day 6 of 10: Best Business & Regulatory Model forprovisioning OFC(EASsy, TEAMs, etc) Bw. Micheru: This consumer says we are nowhere near where we should and can be. Paying $19 a month for DSL is what I was used to a couple of months ago and now I am paying x300 for lower speeds! I think the answer lies somewhere in between.. Yes competition works, but there needs to be a "big brother" watching & willing to enforce whatever regulations are passed. LK
Alex,
You are taking a dangerous route here. Remember KPTC? It was run for the people by the people. The legacy issues from those days are still haunting TKL today. When you say cost based, remember how many employees they hired? Remember Safaricom before it was privatised and a strategic investor brought in? They has 20,000 subscribers and barely covered Nairobi and MSA and some highly political locates on their 071 analogue service. Today Safaricom is in places we did not even know existed, thanks to competition from Celtel. You can now get phone for 3,000/- shillings compared to 250,000/- before. As a consumer of the mobile services. I am certainly better off. I trust when you speak for consumers you are also speaking for me a consumer.
Remember Internet services 5 years ago used to cost - to operators $8,000 per 64Kbps (half circuit) today the same $64Kbps is less than $200 to the consumer. Consumers are getting Internet services on the GSM network on a pay as you go basis, 300/- for 30MB and so on. Surely Alex as a consumer I am better of.
Competition works!!! Let's not be too hasty to discount progress that is being made. We must be seen to support the progress. The beneficiaries are all of us.
The only question inour mind now is, will CCK allow us to connect to their national backbone also at cost? Losts of services (SOA) are waiting....
Finally is there any information you have that CCK will own the national backbone. Please let me know, I would need to have a major discussion with Eng Waweru (DG) I am certain the regulator is not going to operate a cable. This would be against all things one can be against :-)
-- Joseph Mucheru Executive Director mucheru@wananchi.com
From: Alex Gakuru Reply-To: Kenya ICT Action Network - KICTANet Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:53:53 -0800 (PST) To: Subject: Re: [Kictanet] Day 6 of 10: Best Business & Regulatory Model for provisioning OFC(EASsy, TEAMs, etc)
Cable is cheap and consumers will build their own infrastructure and operate on cost recovery basis. Both of you private sector and government have long let us down and in any case when government and private sector agree 100% Enrons (or is it "Kenlons" ) surface and consumers suffer endlessly.
We need a "socialist" cable run by nuns and monks to transition from the "open and shut" internet in Kenya today. The rest are just turf wars (govt, telecos, "experts " et al) protecting hitherto imagined markets in perpetuity.
The only question inour mind now is, will CCK allow us to connect to their national backbone also at cost? Losts of services (SOA) are waiting....
Those with lots of cash can build their own parallel cables because nobody is stopping them, is there? And we need the redudancy anyways.
/Alex
John Walubengo wrote: Alan,
I think what Eric meant was that even though the fiber cable infrastructure would be operated at cost - it would still be open to competition i.e. the Regulatory framework should allow for multiple, complimentary as well as competing submarine fiber cable.
In other words, lets have the EASsy, TEAMs and Flag running accross E.Africa, as long as each one of them Operates their cable at cost and allowing other SERVICE/APPLICATION providers equal access...
Unfortunately, this model is not quite easy to execute because it demands a total overhaul of the existing Telco market strutures. The current regulatory and business structures in most of the regional countries allow and probably encourage Operators to own the backbone (essential) infrastructure and still operate accross all the service layers.
For example Telkom Kenya, owns the country-wide Backbone infrastructure as well as the International Gateway and is licensed to compete in all the Service areas i.e through its ISP subsidiary, its Wireless Subsidiary, etc.
Safaricom, Celltel (the 2 mobile operators) have also joined into the fray along the same-principles i.e. owning the Backbone infrastructures and continuing to compete accross the SERVICE/APPLICATION layers or sectors.
And the (good/bad?)news is that the prevailing situations seem to have served quite well if seen in terms of accelerated growth it has brought to the Industry. So the question would be, why try and change all that? Why should the provisioning of the submarine OFC disrupt the comfortable status quo within the national telecoms market structures? I see this as the biggest obstacle towards an otherwise good Open Access model...
walu.
--- Alan Finlay wrote:
Hi Eric
Earlier John said that the Open Access model put forward that access to the fibre optic should be at cost, and the money made at the service end only.
Your version says that access to the cable can be competitive - or that entities that invest in the cable's infrastructure must be allowed to make a profit out of the cable.
Is this correct? Can you elaborate a bit on the differences between these two 'open access' positions as you understand them?
Thanks Alan
----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Osiakwan" To: Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 11:42 AM Subject: Re: [Kictanet] Day 4 of 10: What are the Existing/Sugested
Dear All,
The Open Access Model makes two important distinctions which the regulatory policy environment must capture and enforce; 1. the distinction between infrastructure and services so that infrastructure providers are NOT allowed to also provide SERVICES and vice versa.
2. owership of the infrastructure (in layer 1) should not guarantee any form of fair or unfair access to capacity for the provision of service (in layer 2).
2. that there is no discrimination within and between both camps so that infrastructure providers are able to establish clear and transparent trading relationships with all service providers and vice versa. Within the infrastructure or service layer there should be no restriction on COMPETITION and SERVICE DELIVERY.
This creates an ecosystem of various operators interconnecting seemlessly and ensuring there is interoperability.
Eric here
NB: Becuase my preference is for the "first" infrastructure entity to be owned in a multi- stakeholder approach, the financial mechansims that are employed may also impose some regulations from the financial market that can only be detailed on a case by case basis.
--- John Walubengo wrote:
Hi All, following the w/end, it maybe appropriate to recollect and review how far we have gone in this online discussion.
Themes Reminder 1) Why OFC (1day) *it is cheaper(than Satellite option), it is faster, more reliable, more secure, has unlimited bandwidth capacity.
2) Existing Business Models for OFC provisioning (2days) *Privately provisioned *Consortium provisioned *Open Access provisioned
3) Existing/Appropriate Regulatory Models for OFC (2days) *No-Regulation *Some Regulation *Full Regulation
4) Best Model (Business+Regulatory) for E. Africans (2days)
5) Projected Impact on Stakeholders (2days)
6) Reconciling Stakeholder interests/Conclusions (2days)
So today we start of on Point 4, and wish to hear views on what would be the preferred Business and Regulatory model for provisioning the Optical Fiber Cable on the E.African Coast. Feel free to comment on a previous theme as well.
walu. --- Alex Gakuru wrote:
Walu,
I dug this interesting read off google search a while back (78 page)
Open Access Models Options for Improving Backbone Access in Developing Countries (with a Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa) Final Draft August 2005 An infoDev Technical Report prepared by S P I N T R A C K A B DROTTNINGGATAN 99, 113 60 STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN PHONE: +46-8-528 00 310 FAX: +46-8-528 00 315 WWW.SPINTRACK.COM INFO@SPINTRACK.COM
<
http://www.infodev.org/files/2569_file_OPEN_ACCESS_REPORT.pdf
/Alex
John Walubengo wrote: Found an answer to my own question < talked about emailing instead of talking to oneself?>>
anyway...The proposed regulatory framework for EASsy (which purportedly is going the Open Access way) seems to be covered here....
~~~~00-copied below---
East Africa: EASSy Project Model Approved Thursday, 22 June 2006 All countries participating in the development of the East African Sub Marine Cable System (EASSy) have now agreed to implement the project on an 'open access basis,' overcoming a hurdle that had initially threatened to derail the project. The Policy and Regulatory Adviser of Nepad e-Africa Commission, Dr Edmund Katiti said that the South African government and Nepad's ICT experts had persuaded the countries that were objecting to the change in the project to realise the limitations of the consortium model which they had preferred.
The EASSy project involves laying of a fibre optic cable from Mtunzini north of Durban, through landing stations along East Africa to Port Sudan. The cable will link with the countries' national networks at the landing stations. Others would subsequently be interconnected through the networks of landlocked countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and D.R Congo.
When the project was first conceived, it was to be primarily a private sector project. The core investors in the cable infrastructure would determine the retail prices of bandwidth. The project was to be owned and operated by a group of companies that would generate financing; an arrangement known as the consortium model. The South African government and Nepad have recently argued that the consortium model would not achieve the objective of the project - bringing down the costs of communication in the region. They suggested that the model be altered to "open access", where any operator or institution in the participating countries would be allowed to acquire equity if it can afford the agreed contribution.
In the open access model, the cable would be owned and operated by the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), a company created to manage the network and establish the price of bandwidth. An Intergovernmental Assembly is to be formed to regulate the costs that the SPV would charge operators. Rwanda will host the headquarters of the SPV in part as recognition of their commitment to the development and promotion of ICTs in the country.
After the agreement reached earlier in June, the Nepad e-Africa Commission is working towards the signing of a protocol that would form the legal framework of the EASSy project. The Commission has already prepared a project plan, which it has sent to the member governments to review and comment, a process that take until August, when the protocol signing is anticipated. Construction is expected to commence by the end of 2006.
Katiti said they hope to raise a quarter of the funding from equity acquisition payments by companies from the region and then raise the remainder from African financial institutions: African Development Bank, Comesa's PTA Bank, East African Development Bank and others.
Source: The Monitor - WDR/Intelecon Regulatory News
http://www.regulateonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=780&Itemid =32&relaItemid=877
walu.
--- John Walubengo wrote:
What form/level of regulation would be required? Eric plse on Open Access, plse elaborate maybe in three paragraphs. And maybe also Kai would have a comment on Regulation with regard to a Private sector submarine OFC provisioning....oh yes, Kihanya (the learned one) may have a point
too...
walu. nb: Govt officials are also encouraged to say
something -
members are informed to treat their comments as their personal and not official postions ;-).
--- Lucy Kimani wrote:
Regulation is definately required as even the big boys of the west are regulated, in a capitalistic environment (read cat-throat) self-regulation has not worked, and is sure a recipe for disaster.
LK > OK. Looks like Fridays are still fridays -even online. Very > little activity. Heard from only Harry and Alex...is
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