Hey, why the sudden silence? maybe you are all holed up in the PS office witnessing the TEAMs signing ceremony? Anyhow, let me give my view about the post-OFC environment. If we go the Consortium way: *In this situation, the Regulator would have no oversight over the cable. *Prices may remain hihg *Consumers may suffer *Govt/Consortium members would make some good money. If we go the Private Sector way: *No Regultory oversight *Prices may dance according to market dynamics *Consumers may suffer but with a chance of improvements *Private investor would make money *If we go the Open Access way: -it's hard to visualise this, given the resistance this model has continued to attract from most players(Govt, Regulator, etc). Any other predictions? walu. Nway, here is what I t --- John Walubengo <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:
I must thank all for your valuable views shared over the last two days regarding the previous theme :- what are the Best Models for Provisioning submarine OFC.
Three models seem to have persisted throughout the discussion, namely, Open Access (EASsy), Private-led (Flag), and our famous Consortium models. Where Mucheru mentions separation of Cable ownership from Cable Management fits in squarely with the Open Access thinking, whereby, the investors in the cable (Govt, Public, Private Companies) appoint an independent management Agent (at a fee) to Operate the Cable on their behalf on a cost-recovery, open access basis. i.e Open to current and future Operators wishing to connect to the landing points or invest further in the cable on equal basis). The cable becomes an essential service or public good, from where Operators can compete to offer (other) Services at a Profit.
Flag- a Private Investment initiative came in with a variant model where the cable is privately owned but promises to open access to the Landing points - but aims to maximise returns on the investments made on the cable infrastructure by reselling capacity at market rates. They also aim to play only at the Infrastructure level, rather than at all levels, namely Infrastructure (cable) and Services (Network and Application), opting to leave that to ISPs and ASP(Application Service Providers)
Nobody really pushed the Consortium model, but probably Badru did hint strongly for such a model when he mentioned that Commercial interest should be let loose to play dynamically with the market forces. The Consortium model is where a group of Operators get into a private, closed, commercial agreement aiming to build, own and operate a submarine cable with aim of maximising their returns (profit) in the shortest time possible social connotation notwithstanding.
And this is where the Consumer has suffered. The short-terms interests of investors must be balanced against the long-term social benefits that would accrue from a affordable bandwidth provisions. Alex and LK seem to be voice of the consumer here, urging the Regulator to flex their muscle probably now and more in future when the OFC is laid-out.
In all this, the various financing options were not so pronounced as noted by Michael J. Apart from IPO recommendation from Kai and Bill, the financing models (Equity, Debt, etc) has not quite come through and I hope someone could make comment on that within the remaining three days as we discuss our next theme:- What is the likely impact of the above models on the existing stakeholders (Operators, Regulator and Consumers)? That is, what do we see as the roles of the above stakeholders in the new dispensation of the Optical Submarine Cable. The efloor is again open and we have two days on this one.
walu. Nb: a Face2Face meeting will follow up after this online discussion where all these issues will be streamlined. ~~~~~000~~~~~~ Theme Reminder: 1) Why OFC (1day) 2) Existing Business Models for OFC provisioning (2days) 3) Existing/Appropriate Regulatory Models for OFC (2days) 4) Best Model (Business+Regulatory) for E. Africans (2days) <Ongoing-Open> 5) Projected Impact on Stakeholders (2days) <Pending> 6) Reconciling Stakeholder interests/Conclusions (1day) <Pending>
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