Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan tangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
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"
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
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"
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"
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
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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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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Before quickly "thirding", I urge on the need to have light shed on TEAMS investment structure, otherwise we could end up never getting the envisaged cheap bandwidth. Why? After 51% of Telkom Kenya is sold to British Telcom (or another) then whoever will have the cable ownership transfered to them thus could dictate what the final price will be. Little Telkom sale (Shs 5 Billion) is happening just when the promising CDMA is getting rolled out. Going by last year's Safaricom profits, the sale value is also Kidogo Sana. Alex --- Kai Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote:
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
=== message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/
Dear Alex, Telkon will not own Teams. The Government of Kenya will own 40% stake in the Teams SPV while regional operators and investors will own 45%. The remaining 15% shall be owned by Etisalat. The Government shall ensure open access in both Teams and the Terrestrial Networks to enable both large and small enterprises to compete. Do not worry about the sale of TKL since we have not sold it yet and we shall not sell it if the deal is not good. Regards Ndemo.
Before quickly "thirding", I urge on the need to have light shed on TEAMS investment structure, otherwise we could end up never getting the envisaged cheap bandwidth.
Why? After 51% of Telkom Kenya is sold to British Telcom (or another) then whoever will have the cable ownership transfered to them thus could dictate what the final price will be.
Little Telkom sale (Shs 5 Billion) is happening just when the promising CDMA is getting rolled out. Going by last year's Safaricom profits, the sale value is also Kidogo Sana.
Alex
--- Kai Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote:
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
=== message truncated ===
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wow! "Open Access" is music to many no just my ears. I wish you failure at selling Telkom this way, honestly. That said, could you allow me to organise a Special Purpose Truck for Kenyan consumers to invest in Telkom more money that the Shs. 5 Billion? Fast tracking (READ get round) NSE rules? Thanks. --- bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote:
Dear Alex, Telkon will not own Teams. The Government of Kenya will own 40% stake in the Teams SPV while regional operators and investors will own 45%. The remaining 15% shall be owned by Etisalat. The Government shall ensure open access in both Teams and the Terrestrial Networks to enable both large and small enterprises to compete.
Do not worry about the sale of TKL since we have not sold it yet and we shall not sell it if the deal is not good.
Regards
Ndemo.
Before quickly "thirding", I urge on the need to have light shed on TEAMS investment structure, otherwise we could end up never getting the envisaged cheap bandwidth.
Why? After 51% of Telkom Kenya is sold to British Telcom (or another) then whoever will have the cable ownership transfered to them thus could dictate what the final price will be.
Little Telkom sale (Shs 5 Billion) is happening just when the promising CDMA is getting rolled out. Going by last year's Safaricom profits, the sale value is also Kidogo Sana.
Alex
--- Kai Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote:
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
=== message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________________ Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
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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_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet This message was sent to: kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/kai.wulff%40kdn.co.ke -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet This message was sent to: seanm@aitecafrica.com Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/seanm%40aitecafrica.com
Sean, I actually agree totally with the South African Govt. Why should a National Asset be held at ransom by foreign owned private companies? That is a very bad idea. Look at the US, no foreign owned airline is allowed to fly domestic routes. Why aren't the likes of you questioning that and calling it racism? SA of all countries knows exactly what happens when they allow Europeans to come in promising milk and honey. Unless you have walked in their shoes do not criticise. Hurrah to the SA government for looking out for their own people. Joe On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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"
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
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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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-- Joseph Manthi CEO MEO Ltd http://www.meoltd.com
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
Since when is International Connectivity a national asset? A cable comes, you don't like the price you don't buy .. Why did nobody insist on SA ownership of the Satellites that are broadcasting and REALLY using assets like frequencies? Kai -----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Joseph Manthi Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:31 To: kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa Sean, I actually agree totally with the South African Govt. Why should a National Asset be held at ransom by foreign owned private companies? That is a very bad idea. Look at the US, no foreign owned airline is allowed to fly domestic routes. Why aren't the likes of you questioning that and calling it racism? SA of all countries knows exactly what happens when they allow Europeans to come in promising milk and honey. Unless you have walked in their shoes do not criticise. Hurrah to the SA government for looking out for their own people. Joe On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote: 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"
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
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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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Kai, This has nothing to do with SA. It is Kenya's job to protect Kenya and not SA. If Kenya does not want the SA satellites broadcasting in Kenya, they can block it. All SA is saying is that if there any cables landing in SA, it should be majority owned by SAfricans. Any African country can do the same. And yes any cable landing in SA (or Kenya) is the national asset of SA (or Kenya). Every SA (or Kenyan) should have access to it. And judging by the pricing of some of these cable, it is unlikely that majority of SA (or Kenyans) will be able to afford it. Shouldn't SA (or Kenyan) governments be concerned about the pricing and therefore ownership of these cables? Yes - these cables are national assets. Let me see - who owns the cables entering the Federal Republic of Germany? Germany of course. Why should you then, a German national, deny the South African Government of deciding who should own these cables. Remember that SA has the experience of SAT3. Joe On 9/13/07, Kai U. Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote:
Since when is International Connectivity a national asset?
A cable comes, you don't like the price you don't buy .. Why did nobody insist on SA ownership of the Satellites that are broadcasting and REALLY using assets like frequencies?
Kai
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Joseph Manthi Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:31 To: kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
Sean, I actually agree totally with the South African Govt. Why should a National Asset be held at ransom by foreign owned private companies? That is a very bad idea. Look at the US, no foreign owned airline is allowed to fly domestic routes. Why aren't the likes of you questioning that and calling it racism?
SA of all countries knows exactly what happens when they allow Europeans to come in promising milk and honey. Unless you have walked in their shoes do not criticise.
Hurrah to the SA government for looking out for their own people.
Joe
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
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote: 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)
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Since when is International Connectivity a national asset?
A cable comes, you don't like the price you don't buy .. Why did nobody insist on SA ownership of the Satellites that are broadcasting and REALLY using assets like frequencies?
Kai
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Joseph Manthi Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:31 To: kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
Sean, I actually agree totally with the South African Govt. Why should a National Asset be held at ransom by foreign owned private companies? That is a very bad idea. Look at the US, no foreign owned airline is allowed to fly domestic routes. Why aren't the likes of you questioning that and calling it racism?
SA of all countries knows exactly what happens when they allow Europeans to come in promising milk and honey. Unless you have walked in their shoes do not criticise.
Hurrah to the SA government for looking out for their own people.
Joe
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
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote: 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
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
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
Joe, The BT cable to Germany is owned by BT, the Flag cable by India, we have AT&T, France Telecom ............... What you are saying makes NO sense! A cable connects 2 points. Let's assume that every country imposes the 51% rule on ownership .. Well, then you cable can't land anywhere unless you can have 102% ownership! There is an ITU and blocking of a SAT transmission would not go down well. My point is, a country can have unlimited amounts of cables coming, these cables can be owned in different combinations which could be national or international. How would EASSY work in your opinion? 17 countries participate and share costs (well even if you don't believe in EASSy, all systems work that way). Should everybody have 51% ownership? If not, should Kenya run a cable to a country that does not insist on 51%, then TZ runs it's own cable, Mozambique, SA .....???? Kai -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Manthi [mailto:jmanthi@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:48 To: Kai U. Wulff Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa Kai, This has nothing to do with SA. It is Kenya's job to protect Kenya and not SA. If Kenya does not want the SA satellites broadcasting in Kenya, they can block it. All SA is saying is that if there any cables landing in SA, it should be majority owned by SAfricans. Any African country can do the same. And yes any cable landing in SA (or Kenya) is the national asset of SA (or Kenya). Every SA (or Kenyan) should have access to it. And judging by the pricing of some of these cable, it is unlikely that majority of SA (or Kenyans) will be able to afford it. Shouldn't SA (or Kenyan) governments be concerned about the pricing and therefore ownership of these cables? Yes - these cables are national assets. Let me see - who owns the cables entering the Federal Republic of Germany? Germany of course. Why should you then, a German national, deny the South African Government of deciding who should own these cables. Remember that SA has the experience of SAT3. Joe On 9/13/07, Kai U. Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote: the the 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)
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Since when is International Connectivity a national asset?
A cable comes, you don't like the price you don't buy .. Why did nobody insist on SA ownership of the Satellites that are broadcasting and REALLY using assets like frequencies?
Kai
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+kai.wulff=kdn.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Joseph Manthi Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:31 To: kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
Sean, I actually agree totally with the South African Govt. Why should a National Asset be held at ransom by foreign owned private companies? That is a very bad idea. Look at the US, no foreign owned airline is allowed to fly domestic routes. Why aren't the likes of you questioning that and calling it racism?
SA of all countries knows exactly what happens when they allow Europeans to come in promising milk and honey. Unless you have walked in their shoes do not criticise.
Hurrah to the SA government for looking out for their own people.
Joe
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
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote: 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
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
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
Oh and I forgot .. Sat3 .. SA owns the biggest share! In my opinion a FREE MARKET will regulate pricing to the lowest levels, NOT regulation and restrictions! Kai -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Manthi [mailto:jmanthi@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 17:48 To: Kai U. Wulff Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa Kai, This has nothing to do with SA. It is Kenya's job to protect Kenya and not SA. If Kenya does not want the SA satellites broadcasting in Kenya, they can block it. All SA is saying is that if there any cables landing in SA, it should be majority owned by SAfricans. Any African country can do the same. And yes any cable landing in SA (or Kenya) is the national asset of SA (or Kenya). Every SA (or Kenyan) should have access to it. And judging by the pricing of some of these cable, it is unlikely that majority of SA (or Kenyans) will be able to afford it. Shouldn't SA (or Kenyan) governments be concerned about the pricing and therefore ownership of these cables? Yes - these cables are national assets. Let me see - who owns the cables entering the Federal Republic of Germany? Germany of course. Why should you then, a German national, deny the South African Government of deciding who should own these cables. Remember that SA has the experience of SAT3. Joe On 9/13/07, Kai U. Wulff <kai.wulff@kdn.co.ke> wrote: the the 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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Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you? I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets. Bravo SA. Joe On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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"
To unsubscribe send a mail to: imailsrv@afrispa.org. Type the following in the body of your mail (not header): "Unsubscribe discuss" (without quotes). This List is operated by ZAnet Internet Services: www.zanet.co.za on behalf of www.afrispa.org. For any List Admin queries send mail to William@zanet.co.za
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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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I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is. --- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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]
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
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
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
from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from
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
On they are consistent with directives, as should the people running away the Eassy project because 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>
=== message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________________ Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html
I concur lets keep all discussion civilized King'ang'i -----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+fes=iconnect.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+fes=iconnect.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Alex Gakuru Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 5:55 PM To: fes@iconnect.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is. --- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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]
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
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
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
from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from
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
On they are consistent with directives, as should the people running away the Eassy project because 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>
=== message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet This message was sent to: fes@iconnect.co.ke Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/fes%40iconnect.co.ke __________ NOD32 2527 (20070913) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com
hear, hear my mblatha! Mblayo ps. any relationship to Classic's Mwalimu Kingangi? :-D On Sep 14, 2007, at 8:46 AM, Ronald King'ang'i wrote:
I concur lets keep all discussion civilized
King'ang'i
-----Original Message----- From: kictanet-bounces+fes=iconnect.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+fes=iconnect.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Alex Gakuru Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 5:55 PM To: fes@iconnect.co.ke Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cableplantangled in acrimony inSouth Africa
I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is.
--- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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]
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
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
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
from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from
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
On they are consistent with directives, as should the people running away the Eassy project because 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>
=== message truncated ===
______________________________________________________________________ ______ ________ Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
This message was sent to: fes@iconnect.co.ke Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/fes% 40iconnect.co.ke
__________ NOD32 2527 (20070913) Information __________
This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
This message was sent to: brian@isisweb.nl Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/ mailman/options/kictanet/brian%40isisweb.nl
I must agree with Alex, sometimes one does get quite heated-up online and unleashes lines that if read by third parties sound quite on the edge/offensive. Here's what I have learnt to do when i feel the blood boiling in my throat and want to hit back. I always Breath in (x3), Edit the text, then send. As they often say - we may not agree on the issues, but can at least agree to disagree diplomatically. walu. --- Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is.
--- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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]
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
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
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
from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from
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
On they are consistent with directives, as should the people running away the Eassy project because 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
=== message truncated === ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433
John, Hear, hear, hear. But it is their language. Now if it was Kiswahili, things would have been more colorful and well articulated. But since it came from the water, I use what I was taught by my Std 3 teacher. And some of us cannot breathe. Joe On 9/14/07, John Walubengo <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:
I must agree with Alex,
sometimes one does get quite heated-up online and unleashes lines that if read by third parties sound quite on the edge/offensive.
Here's what I have learnt to do when i feel the blood boiling in my throat and want to hit back. I always Breath in (x3), Edit the text, then send.
As they often say - we may not agree on the issues, but can at least agree to disagree diplomatically.
walu. --- Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is.
--- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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]
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
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
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
from us, we have a lot of support from investors." SA and other African governments broke away from
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
On they are consistent with directives, as should the people running away the Eassy project because 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
=== message truncated ===
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
This message was sent to: jmanthi@gmail.com Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/jmanthi%40gmail.com
-- Joseph Manthi CEO MEO Ltd http://www.meoltd.com
Thanks Walu, Alex...And a gentle reminder of the rules: Mind your manners - * Be polite - virtual members are real not a cyberspace borg with no feelings. * Watch your words - They can’t see your face, and the emotions in words can get misinterpreted. * Kick the bad language - People are listening. * Laws are laws - What’s real in the real world are the same in cyberspace. * Don’t send rude or offensive e-mails or postings. * Newbie tolerance - You’re an expert in cyberspace, don’t forget there are newbie’s trying to learn as much as you had to. * Be ethical in your posting. Don't lie, plagiarize, or deliberately do harm to another KICTANet forum user. best alice John Walubengo wrote:
I must agree with Alex,
sometimes one does get quite heated-up online and unleashes lines that if read by third parties sound quite on the edge/offensive.
Here's what I have learnt to do when i feel the blood boiling in my throat and want to hit back. I always Breath in (x3), Edit the text, then send.
As they often say - we may not agree on the issues, but can at least agree to disagree diplomatically.
walu. --- Alex Gakuru <alex.gakuru@yahoo.com> wrote:
I know that I am usually hard hitting at my opposition discussants, but I am feel expressions used below are uncalled for no matter how opposed the writer's view is.
--- Joseph Manthi <jmanthi@gmail.com> wrote:
Sean, You of all people, a man living in England, reaping wealth from the ignorance of Africans, should not be making comments like these. You do not want Africans to realize what is going on. Do not wake a sleeping giant. It is high time we started taking care of our own. Why do you think that what SA is doing is "Rubbish"? Doesn't this honourable minister have the right to protect SA assets from nyangaus like you?
I wish every African government is like South Africa where we can weed off foreign ownership of African assets.
Bravo SA.
Joe
On 9/13/07, Sean Moroney <seanm@aitecafrica.com> wrote:
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
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Looks like East African Submarine System (EASSy) may ran into more problems than anticipated if SA pulls out -as gathered from their recent moves below. And so comes the question:- how far is The East African subMarine System? And what was the final a) Ownership model (Private, Government, PPP, etc) b) Operational model (SPV, Company Ltd, etc) and c) Governance model (Open Access, Closed, Commercial, etc) adopted for TEAMS? walu. --- bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote:
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
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participants (11)
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Alex Gakuru -
alice -
bitange＠jambo.co.ke -
Brian Longwe -
Eric Osiakwan -
John Walubengo -
Joseph Manthi -
Kai U. Wulff -
Kai Wulff
-
Ronald King'ang'i -
Sean Moroney