Greetings Walu, At the school I went to, we had a headmaster and when school captains went to consult him, he used to say, "Before I tell you what I have decided, do you have anything to say?" I then asked why bother speaking when the headmaster has already decided? CCK should cancel those proposed fees completely otherwise they are guilty of frustrating promotion of local content from going online and other e-services, the fees being proof. On one hand we are working very hard at addressing the local content problem, but on the on the other the regulator is busy making it even harder to achieve that goal. Except for those already endowed…. Why is it that whenever innovative, promising new services are round the corner, CCK shuts them down via impossible fees and conditions. Some examples: Outsourcing has great potential then CCK started asking for 100,000/= license fees from operators start-ups. ISP services licenses can only be afforded by city businesspersons - as a result 81% of Kenya Internet is available only in Nairobi leaving out "unprofitable" or "not so affluent/lucrative" rural folks. Local Loop Operators - whose, how many and where are they located? Regional Telecommunication Operators, now content... what will the next license be?) India succeeded in widespread internet penetration when their government came to terms with the reality that national access and growth was more valuable that exorbitant annual one-off license fees thus charged 0(zero) rupees to ISPs until in 2003 when they had to charge just 1 (one) rupee as contractual consideration to make agreements legal;) But apparently ours still believes in license income. Board Authority/Decision Processes: Alice Munyua sits at the CCK Board thus no excuse not to know or not party to this proposal - but she did not find it necessary to inform us of this important issue? Then why was it necessary to start a discussion on how to help regulators e-capacity if them the CCK Board knows it all? My onlist question on whether CCK asked us for help were ignored and never answered to-date. Maybe we have a principally flawed regulatory approach resulting in an "Open-But-Shut" liberalized market, impossible for many new players to enter in order to deliver effective market competition for the benefit of telecomm consumers. This explains why end up stuck with perpetually oligopolies keen to retain and expand their grip on the users ("the market") and a handful of institutionalized conformists benefiting alongside. The worst part is that the regulatory philosophy is (deliberately?) structured to lock out small timers and newcomers while consolidating industry benefits in the hands of a few, wealthy. But remember public officials are in office to protect and promote public interests and if the public is not consulted most widely, then for whom are they in office serving? For now and considering that the comments are expected by 5 pm today! I choose to sit back and wait to hear what the headmaster had already decided;) Good day, Alex On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:21 PM, John Walubengo <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:
Alex,
it's actually the other way round. From a strict government perspective - CCK Board decisions or deliberations do NOT ofcourse need KICTAnet endorsement. Howevever I do get your drift, they (CCK Board) are free to harvest as much intelligence as they want from KICTAnet and other sources...which i think they were doing from their call for comments on their website and i think I saw the same in the press a while back.
Maybe what they needed was to commission a discussion thread around the issue for a much better incisive and interactive insight....
walu.
--- Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
One would have supposed that kictanet members privy to this CCK Board decision ought to have have raised these impossibly large, thus SME exclusionist, fees for open discussions???
--- Marcel Werner <marcelcwerner@gmail.com> wrote:
Attention Colleagues,
Are you aware that the Communications Commission of Kenya has issued an important consultative document on the proposed Unified License framework? Comments are welcomed by CCK, due by deadline of 29 February 2008 at close of business.
The market segments categorised in the CCK paper Applications Service Providers (ASPs) and Content Service Providers (CSP) (include all Value Added Service (VAS) Providers and Web-based Public Commercial Information Service Providers can provide economic opportunities to Micro and Small Enterprises (SME) as well as Small and Medium Sized companies (MSE). Note that all these services proposedly attract a KES100,000 registration fee + KES100,000 or 0.5% of turn-over charge. That will keep many players out of the market. How many higher education graduates are working to create a niche for themselves in the market? They should be encouraged and supported!
The new regulatory framework should not place any obstacles to new investors and market entrants, especially not to SME's. Therefore, the proposedlicense fees for these two categories should be replaced by a general license. Normally, such licensees does not pay license fees but register with the regulatory body and subsequently receive a certificate endorsing their operations in the sector.
MARCEL WERNER Kenya ICT Federation
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