Hi,

Fibre to the home will not be cost effective until the providers can resolve the revenue model for the hyped TriblePlay offerings.  Installing fibre to the home today is similar to lobbying the government to run a dual carriage road to every house.  

Fibre cable is not expensive the cost is in the termination equipment which makes roll out expensive both to the provider and consumer, a basic multimode to UTP transceiver costs upwards of Kes.15,000/- and termination of the fibre utilising pre-spliced splitters is about 5,000/- per node yet a DSL modem will cost less than 5,000/- and terminating the copper about 1,500/-.

What you need is fibre to the estate and then implement standard copper to the house using DSL technology to the client which requires cheaper equipment.  

The providers have concentrated their efforts in the so called affluent neighborhoods, wait until Dr. Mwangi goes into data provision, the misguided assumption is that such residents have the required disposable income to pay the high rates.  I say misguided because a few years ago we setup a wireless internet solution in Runda hoping to get at least a 20% penetration, we only got 15 subscribers.

I have tried to convince the providers to stop the outdated model of renting ports on equipment and instead provide a node and allow resellers to deal with the retail end of the business, I spent 3 months trying to explain such a reseller model to KDN but to you avail, a prophet is never/rarely recognized in his home town/village.  I even went as far as posting the proposal on this forum for any other provider to take and run with but again to no avail.

The data providers need to hire someone from the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry to develop their distribution model, only then will we be able to optimally utilise the fibre infrastructure, can you imagine KBL trying to run bars.

Regards
 
Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696


From: Muchiri Nyaggah <muchiri@semacraft.com>
To: robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Fri, 11 February, 2011 15:37:35
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Internet to the Home

Hi Edith,

I am on Zuku at home. It works for me. I have come across a few people quite happy with Zuku on fibre in the Kileleshwa area. Access@Home I hear is also pretty good.

I have heard operators mention a few times how expensive it is to plug customers onto fibre. I would be interested in hearing what other challenges they are facing and how many of those are simply lack of creative thinking as opposed to an unfriendly operating environment (regulator, legislative or otherwise).


Kind regards,

 

Muchiri Nyaggah

Director

@muchiri

+254 722 506400

Semacraft.com

 

 


 

 





On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Edith Adera <eadera@idrc.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

 

Just wanted to share an observation that despite the hype that fibre had arrived on the Kenyan coast, it seems to be taking long for Broadband to arrive in residential homes! I see cable installation everywhere, but I have not come across a provider aggressively advertising to Kenyans for broadband to the homes. Am I living in my own world?

 

Anyone has an idea of a reliable provider with clean bandwidth to homes (not the “bamba” type connections)

 

Edith


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