> Competition!! Yes indeed is consumers
> best friend.
>
> In fact, instead of staying out all night pinging, pinging,
> and
> pinging.. and nothing much changes...then burning ourselves
> out
> arguing on Seacom pricing, we should now strategise how to
> fuel more
> competition, confront next connectivity frontier-rural.
>
> Skunkworks are pleased to inform you that PS Ndemo will be
> talking to
> us about the one million laptops stimulus, technology
> innovation and
> entrepreneurship- On Tuesday next week (4th August).
>
> I intend to ask him "what would be the government's plans
> regards
> hooking Kenya up with
http://www.o3bnetworks.com/?"
>
> See the attached image.
>
> Regards,
>
> Alex
>
> On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Joseph Mucheru<
mucheru@google.com>
> wrote:
> > Walu,
> >
> > I personally think it is a bit simpler than that. Over
> the many years we
> > have lobbied for better services and/or prices in the
> country, the one sure
> > thing that always worked was competition. In the case
> of the cables, I think
> > the competitive pressures are much more for the
> operators as the investment
> > (stakes) are much higher. By various calculations both
> Seacom and Teams have
> > more than three times the current bandwidth demand.
> That means the wiser
> > operators will not only be the ones that are first to
> market, but those that
> > give the right price to attract the economies of scale
> they need to ever get
> > back their investment. Any operator that delays this
> process will only have
> > much more future cost to convincing consumers to get
> onto their network.
> >
> > I am convinced right now it is a consumers market and
> what will be
> > interesting is which operators are able to see things
> from a long-term
> > perspective and win the market. The fact that some
> operators have a much
> > broader and wider local loop infrastructure only makes
> this more interesting
> > and does not give outright victory to one.
> >
> > In summary, investment in the cables is a sunk cost
> and the game now is who
> > can get the user numbers on their network. Any
> short-term gains by an
> > operator through higer prices will cost them
> significantly more in the
> > long-run.
> >
> > my 2cts worth
> >
> > Joe Mucheru
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, Walubengo J <
jwalu@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Waudo,
> >>
> >> Difference -at least on paper- is that TEAMS was
> put up with Tax payers
> >> money by close to 40% (i think). So you and me
> have a 40% say or demand
> >> that they sell the bandwidth commodity at cost.
> But you and me (tax payers)
> >> have 0% (zero%) shares in SEACOM.
> >>
> >> SEACOM was put up with 100% private money - only
> the individual
> >> shareholders can decide on pricing (remember the
> famous SAT3 cable on the
> >> west-african cost that had little impact on
> pricing? the individual
> >> shareholders decided to keep the prices just 1-5%
> below satellite in order
> >> to recoup investment with the shortest timeframes.
> 15 years later, the
> >> prcing was still the same at 1-5% satellite costs.
> That is called Business-
> >> increasing shareholders value and yes nobody
> should apologies for that)
> >>
> >> In short, SEACOM can go the SAT3 way and you and
> CCK can shout as much as
> >> they want and they have every right not to care.
> BUT with TEAMS you and i
> >> do have a say - however small it is or it maybe.
> >>
> >> And its pretty grey area how say like Safcom with
> shares on both cables
> >> can be compelled to reduce prices because if push
> comes to shove Safcom can
> >> say their data is strictly running on the
> (private) SEACOM cable which is
> >> exempt from all the regulatory pressures. It can
> chose to say TEAMS is
> >> simply it back-up route.
> >>
> >> Thats why I think we are breaking new ground here
> and its going to be very
> >> interesting...
> >>
> >> walu.
> >>
>