Firstly, a definate congratulations to safarciom for the bold 3G step forward and the vision of the future. Well done! 

 

And to the visionaries in cable operator companies such as KDN, JTL, TKL,  you have set the destiny for kenya. Your planning for the future is on track.

 

Now onto the issue about all wireless technologies becoming obsolete with the arrival of the undersea fiber. I believe these technologies will become a hinderance to internet growth in plenty parts of the country. End users may need to be more informed about the ROI on these technologies as the date for the undersea fiber nears :

 

I list my points below :

 

1) For household broadband adsl services, can the technologies deliver 8Mbit/2Mbit services?

2) For business adsl and broadband services, can the technologies deliver 10-100Mbit services?

3) Do the base stations have the capacities to sustain large gigabit connectivity?

4) Are all the base stations inter-connected via fiber?

5) Those base stations that have microwave inter-connections, are there any planned upgrades to gigabit and above?

6) To keep continuation of the wireless business, will the providers become bottlenecks to end users?

7) Will cheaper backbone rates become expensive due to local loop costs?

 

I think the future of internet distribution will revert to fiber to dslams' and copper to end users in the early stages with wireless as redundancy. Does the regulator have measures in place to discourage service providers from becoming hinderances? To encourage takeup of capacity, discourage backward trends due to older technologies and accelerate internet infrastructure growth, what would be the short terms and longer term policies ?

 

Your comments/corrections are welcome.

 

Thank you.

 

Aki.