Yes, the security angle struck me as typical Newspeak from a regime that can get away with rubbish like that where there is no effective opposition. How like their Apartheid forebears they sound! Sean Moroney Chairman AITEC Africa seanm@aitecafrica.com -----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+seanm=aitecafrica.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+seanm=aitecafrica.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Kai Wulff Sent: 12 September 2007 12:54 To: seanm@aitecafrica.com Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa I second that! It is comforting to know that SA will provide security to Africa by insisting on a majority ownership of the cables! I am sure this attitude will change once Kenya receives capacity @ less than USD 100,- per M .. Kai ----- Original Message ----- From: <bitange@jambo.co.ke> To: <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 14:44 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan tangled in acrimony inSouth Africa I used to have a difficult time explaining to fellow Kenyans that it was very difficult dealing with our brothers in SA because at every meeting goal posts kept on shifting. Perharps now everybody understands that the veto power in the NEPAD protocol was a control tool. Below please find additional material. Ndemo. Cables require local ownership BY DAMARIA SENNE & CHRISTELLE DU TOIT <mailto:damaria@itweb.co.za> [ Johannesburg, 10 September 2007 ] South Africa requires that all undersea cables landing here be majority owned by South Africans, says communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. Speaking at the Southern African Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference (Satnac) 2007, in Mauritius, this morning, Matsepe-Casaburri said government was happy with indications that investors plan to land cables in the country. However, she will soon announce new landing guidelines that require that "all cables " landing in SA be majority owned by South Africans, she said. The guidelines will also be consistent with SA's foreign policy and take the security of the country, and the African continent, into consideration, she said. "Every cable landing or leaving SA should incorporate in it the Nepad [New Partnership for Africa's Development] Broadband Infrastructure Network." Security measures are important, given the state of our insecure world, she added. Matsepe-Casaburri said that she instructed Dep.of Communications Dir-General Lyndall Shope-Mafole to propose the landing guidelines to the Interim Inter-Governmental Assembly for discussion. She also noted that her department studied the communications regulations of other countries when drafting the landing guidelines, ensuring they are consistent with international trends. Determination expected BMI-TechKnowledge senior analyst Richard Hurst says the implications of the ownership stipulations are that "those who do end up rolling out cables will have to do so via partnerships". He cites Seacom and Neotel's interaction as an example of this, where "Neotel basically would control the landing rights of Seacom in SA". According to Hurst, "government is trying to hedge its bets", but the stipulations set out by the minister have generally been expected. He says South African companies should benefit from the directives, as should the consumer. "It should open up access to those cables and bring prices down." He adds that, as the international community moves towards always-on broadband, SA will also increasingly need high-speed capacity. However he reiterates: "The more bandwidth we have, the better." Investor support Meanwhile, Matsepe-Casaburri said SA was convinced it was on the right path to break away from the Eassy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) cable project and support the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network, as well as initiating its own undersea cable systems. She said there was strong support from potential investors in the Nepad Broadband (?) Infrastructure Network. "Instead of people running away from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from the Eassy project because larger operators taking part in the initiative bought such large quantities of capacity that there would never be fair access for smaller operators, she noted. EASSY project was not in line with the Nepad objective, which was to facilitate fair and open access for all telecoms providers to lower the cost of telecoms on the continent, she said. She noted that SA's Parliament had ratified the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network protocol.
fyi from the AfrISPA discuss list....
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Anders Comstedt" <anders@ssvl.kth.se> Date: 9 September 2007 21:52:19 GMT+03:00 To: <Discuss@afrispa.org> Subject: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan tangled in acrimony inSouth Africa Reply-To: Discuss@afrispa.org
Frank,
You are right that everyone else but RSA needs a cable to RoW much, much more than the good folks south, also that the thing has got stuck in political concerns and power games. The good thing is, however, that the general consensus on the needs, commercial impact and development leverage of a widely available optical fibre cable has shifted from cold to warm.
Technically, there is no need for an East African submarine cable south beyond Maputo at all, as there is well protected optical fibre Maputo - Pretoria on the power lines. Which, btw, RSA has effectively prevented open & fair use of during several years, effectively leaving Maputo on VSAT for a much longer time than necessary. So SA could connect that route, already today, to any cable from the north that lands close to Maputo.
Now two small issues: First, RSA companies are major stakeholders in any submarine cable proposal that has emerged the last couple of years, dominant to the extent that it has made other parties concerned on who actually will control a cable system supposed to be a joint project with some 23 participants. The Telkom SA part of EASSy is closer to 50% than 1/23, and may well increase to >50% if Telkom buys any of the other participants, which has been contemplated by some pundits. Second, the RSA market is a closed market where only a very limited number of politically approved players are carefully allowed to participate in sharing the revenues of an artificially high price level market. Who wants to rock that boat of the industry insiders? So you have strong concerns among established telecom industry interests in RSA to not change the game for as long as possible. According to some analysts, keeping this inflated price for another year or so is worth much more money in excessive profits than the entire investment in EASSy. Why give away money by a too early price reduction?
So what does the rest of the SSA think about this? And also the international community in general, forking in quite a bit of the financing into any of the cable projects suggested? Well, they probably don't go easily on potentially offending the single biggest partner they have in all other trade and political issues in SSA by suggesting a solution without clear RSA involvement. The bean counters then look at the traffic volumes and say that any project without the RSA volume will be a commercial disaster, and what about restoration if we cannot reach and have an agreement with SAT-3?
You end up in a situation where the question is: Who blinks first?
If there is no initiatives potentially making any EA submarine cable roll-out happen ex RSA, there will be little change in any broader RSA stance as long as the revenues and influence of the joint RSA political and industrial telecoms interests are lined up the way they are.
Others have to consider their positions and responsibilities in relation to all this. Personally, I cannot help looking at TEAMS in the light of the above.
What about an EASSy project, now financed even more by international development money, first built to those countries where an open market exist? Gradually expanding South instead of gradually expanding North?
Loosing a big Telkom part of the financing is of cause not what those banking, operator and vendor interests want that have got the financial EASSy-packet stitched together with difficulty.
The interesting thing, however, is that the financing of EASSy seems to have been growing softer by the day during 2007. What was a year ago portrayed as a pure commercial financing is now looking more and more to be relying upon soft elements just short of labelling significant amounts pure grants.
This shift opens up interesting considerations on the entire development financing too: Shall such money be used to shelter commercial interests from competition, actively preventing driving user prices down? Maintaining artificially high profits to protected operators in restricted markets is not necessarily in line with what should be eligible for support. At some point of time that discussion will re-surface too in a similar way as it did at WSIS when the WBG took a clear stance pro openness and equal availability of cable capacity for all interested parties.
I have a hard time understanding how EU institutions can provide not only the initial semi-soft "commercial loans" but now more of softer financing to any venture so openly wide open to violating several EU principles regarding telecoms and general market openness. Sure, as long as it stayed under the radar various individuals could claim ignorance, but that is getting harder and harder with the EA debate on why an obvious need is not met in a fair way. Supporting a questionable package could soon kill a promising career inside the EU system rather than promoting it. Time must be running out on the non-open conditions?
The alternatives to EASSy now visible, funded by pure commercial capital like SEACOM, makes it even more questionable to give soft funds to any set-up having questionable market development properties. Rather, it reinforces the need to justify any support by such funds with even MORE arguments on the project openness and development leverage.
Both EASSy and SEACOM seem to have a hard time in RSA as long as they are not clearly controlled by local interests.
Both seem up for a hard choice in RSA: Give in, as little as possibly, but the control must be in RSA hands Pass RSA in an immediate implementation of the rest of the system, or Delay the whole thing, waiting for RSA to blink in fear of being left out.
Other EA stakeholders need to consider what situation they like to promote for any cable project in the above respect. Don't just ask the cable projects to carry the burden of dealing with this political risk all by themselves, later blaming them for whatever compromise they make! A risk now being the main obstacle between the current deficit and a state-of- the art, reasonably priced cable connection for SSA to RoW.
The worst alternative for RSA operators is probably a combination of an early East-West SSA link (EA to Angola or Nigeria?) with two new terrestrial and/or submarine links north to the Mediterranean from EA. All the current transit traffic from RSA neighbours to SAT-3 will then disappear in a flash. Instead, RSA may be faced with not only a very limited interest from others to consider an EA submarine cable south, but a desire to making RSA operators subject to a similar transit pricing practice that Telkom SA has up to now offered its neighbours in connecting to SAT-3. Considering the profits in the closed RSA market such a scenario may, however, still be a good alternative to some players in that local market as it may delay the tide by another year or two.
The frustration over the EA development lag by the delay in cable implementation is causing a lot of impatient folks to say that "the only important thing is that a sub marine cable gets built". That is understandable but dangerous. Remember SAT-3.
Dispatched over an industry standard 100Mb/s connection to the home, commonly available for a couple of Big Macs/month in an open, competitive market.
Anders
-----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: Discuss-owner@afrispa.org [mailto:Discuss-owner@afrispa.org] För Frank Habicht Skickat: den 9 september 2007 09:27 Till: Discuss@afrispa.org Ämne: Re: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan tangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
Question(s)...
Who _needs_ (badly) that Eassy lands in SA ? I'm not up-to-date with most things, but I guess for many the connection to Sudan will connect them to the world (maybe without redundancy, but maybe that redundancy would be clumsy anyway).
I think the ones who need Eassy to land in SA the most are SA operators (maybe excl. Telkom, maybe not?).
For everyone else only one thing is important: that this thing gets built! If SA wants to stay with the connectivity they have now.... fine with me. I don't want myself to stay with VSATs.
So, let the SA companies loose out. Let them take it up with their government. Or change the same if necessary. Their problem.
The worst thing that can happen in my little uninformed opinion is that this political (*&^%()*&% delays the building of that cable.
So, can we continue to build it up to Maputo, please? The ..... opinion of politicians in SA shouldn't prevent ~20 other countries to get proper connectivity.
For how long has this project dragged on already? For how long been delayed by politics? Wasn't the contract done to start building?
Frank impatient, disappointed, upset
On 9/8/2007 3:10 PM, Eric Osiakwan wrote:
The sole active supporter of the NEPAD-backed Broadband Infrastructure Project that will never be built, the South African Government is trying to arm-twist EASSy because the project has slipped free of NEPAD control. This is the arrogant display of naked political power that those who have not signed the NEPAD political protocol feared would occur if the larger African brother failed to get its way.
The 10,000km Eassy cable will be 27% owned by Telkom, Neotel and MTN, and is designed to provide desperately needed cheap bandwidth to 21 African countries. But SA's communications department has taken umbrage at what it sees as the commercial nature of the enterprise, and intends to withhold landing rights.
Instead, the government will use taxpayers' money to roll out two rival cables heading east and west, jointly known as the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network. Denying landing rights to EASSy will be detrimental to the three local companies, which, they say, have had the foresight to invest in the project to slash bandwidth prices.
It will also be anticompetitive if EASSy members are not allowed to sell bandwidth to other operators in SA, says Mohsen Khalil, a director with the International Finance Corporation (IFC). He also says the government's hostility shows it has not understood a new commitment the consortium has made to open access.
The IFC is part of the World Bank, and is investing $32,5m to help about 15 small operators participate in Eassy. Yet the director-general of the communications department, Lyndall Shope Mafole, remains vehemently opposed to the project. "Eassy is bad news for developing countries that are not at the level of SA," she says.
"We have many problems with it. The fact that you work for the World Bank makes you think you know what's good for Africa even when you don't live in Africa. I find that quite insulting."
Because Eassy's biggest shareholders are giants like MTN and Telkom, their bulk buying power gives them an advantage over smaller operators also trying to buy and resell capacity to customers in each country, she says.
"South African companies could use their dominance to compete unfairly in other countries. We have a responsibility as the government to ensure there is fair competition. We are not willing to look at something that is clearly discriminatory. We couldn't rest with a clear conscience." If the South African Government has this responsibility, why has it not exercised it over Telkom's SAT3 prices? The Department of Communications talks the talk but does not walk the walk.
A bigger issue threatening not only Eassy but also other foreign- backed cables is a demand that any cable landing in SA is partly owned by local companies. The minimum percentage of local ownership will be determined by Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe Casaburri.
The instant reaction is to question whether SA has the right to do that. It has, under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, Shope-Mafole says. The second reaction is to assume that foreign investors will be deterred. The government's belligerent stance in an effort to promote local industries may backfire and deprive consumers of cheaper bandwidth if foreigners opt to bypass SA's coastline.
Nonsense, Shope-Mafole says. "There are millions of people who want to enter into arrangements and land in SA. We welcome anybody who wants to invest in submarine cables that land on South African soil, but we need South African companies to invest."
Although Eassy boasts 27% local ownership, that may not be enough. Seacom, another private cable already under construction, must also recruit local investors for the plans on its map to match reality. Seacom has signed a deal for SA's second network operator, Neotel, to operate the local landing station, which does not impress the government.
Shope-Mafole said the demand for local ownership in the entire cable linking India to Europe via SA was discussed with Seacom's mostly US investors over a cup of coffee. "I don't think they thought it was unreasonable. I wouldn't say they loved it, but they didn't throw their cups at us," she says. (Source: Business Day)
Eric M.K Osiakwan Executive Secretary AfrISPA (www.afrispa.org <http://www.afrispa.org>) Tel: + 233.21.258800 ext 2031 Fax: + 233.21.258811 Cell: + 233.244.386792 Handle: eosiakwan Snail Mail: Pmb 208, Accra-North Office: BusyInternet - 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North Blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/eric/ Slang: "Tomorrow Now"
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Eric M.K Osiakwan Executive Secretary AfrISPA (www.afrispa.org) Tel: + 233.21.258800 ext 2031 Fax: + 233.21.258811 Cell: + 233.244.386792 Handle: eosiakwan Snail Mail: Pmb 208, Accra-North Office: BusyInternet - 42 Ring Road Central, Accra-North Blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/eric/ Slang: "Tomorrow Now"
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