online responses On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 8:00 PM, Michael Joseph<MJoseph@safaricom.co.ke> wrote:
I think the allegations and language used on this list really discourage real informative comment.
If it may assist, my online policy is to disregard ungrounded comments from "only virtual" annonymii - never seen in real-life for it's awfully tempting to hide behind anonymous e-IDs solely to pelt quite unpleasant words.
Not one shareholder will want to price themselves out of the market and, as another commentator mentioned earlier, the first to market with competitive prices will gain the most.
Proof that competition works. Regulator has indicated their future attention to strengthening competition environment and consumer protection. I am comfortable with that- now it's just to ensure it happens.
I broke my silence on this subject a few days ago and I regret it now as mostly the comments have been somewhat impolite, to put it mildly. I will refrain in future.
Retreat? - a bad move~) Engage "reasonables" and ignore "outrageous" walu:
Competition?
3 cables does NOT = competition.
add Orange will soon also have their own from Indian Ocean islands. add O3B, We'll get somewhere...
As Waudo mentioned elsewhere in his posts, the big boys and girls sitting on TEAMs board are the same ones on SEACOM, EASSy and most likely anything else likely to land in Mombasa in the near future.
Basically you are looking at a conducive\cartel environment for fixing prices - think of our oil industry. Yes you have competition in the name of Agip, Total, Caltex, etc but has that brought down prices for gas?
Probably am being paranoid but I am waiting for the case study where public good won over private profits...maybe it will happen in another 4 months as the PS said. And when it happens it should should not be the misleading by 1-5% price drops. Ideally for the TEAMs (tax-payers) cable you should be asking for the less than 100USD per MB prices that have been floated around over the recent years. And that should be per month rates NOT the punitive per byte of download rates.
I think the *real* problem is that, as usual, in Kenya nobody teaches us or prepares the public on "how-to-lose." The public is ever so subjected to "runners-up" hypes - e.g. 2007 elections, now fibre/cheap Internet, therefore, when eventually things do not turn out as expected, anger easily turns into something else- understandable given the promises made. The important thing is not to lose sight of the long term and try to be 3C (Cool, Calm, Collected) then device interventions, calmly~) cheers,