Archive for the 'Telecom Policy' Category

SA Telecoms Cool Wall

Published
by
Steve Song
on 2 September 2008
in Telecom Policy and World View
. 5 Comments

Inspired by Rudoph Van Den Burg’s riff on Jeremy Clarkson’s TopGear Cool Wall I thought a Cool Wall for the South African telecommunications and Internet community might be fun to do. For those who haven’t seen it, the TopGear Cool Wall ranks automobile coolness on a scale ranging from SubZero to Cool to UnCool to Seriously UnCool. Rudolph Van Den Berg has taken the idea and applied it to European and North American telcos. I think a little local application might be in order.  As with TopGear the rating is somewhat subjective and the list non-exhaustive and possibly downright erratic.

SubZero

Justice Norman Davis is totally sub-zero for the decisive ruling he handed down in the Altech court case.  File this one under Speaking Truth to Bureaucracy.

Altech deserves equally chilly kudos for having the guts to take this to the courts.

Seacom are absolutely cryogenic for being more or less transparent in their approach, for having an Open Access policy, for giving a great deal to TENET, and for looking as if they are actually going to deliver when they said they would.

Cool

Neotel are cool for stepping in to offer a landing station to Seacom when it looked like the Department of Communications was going to send that deal south.

Skyrove are cool because WiFi is still the most underrated technology in the Internet marketplace.  South Africa needs more Skyrove.

The City of Knysna and Uninet are cool for delivering municipal WiFi against the odds.

The City of Cape Town and the City of eThekweni are cool for having forward-looking municipal fibre strategies.

Dabba are cool because they are driving a bottom-up demand-driven telecoms low-cost voice revolution.

Google are cool for even thinking about building an undersea cable to South Africa

WebAfrica are cool for having one of the easiest to use ADSL client sign-up and management websites I have ever encountered.

Uncool

Vox Telecom are uncool for the way they tried to block the Altech case.  Just because they thought they were likely to get a piece of cake, they didn’t want to have to share nicely with others. Ditto for Internet Solutions and Smile Communications.

Nokia is uncool for removing WiFi from some of their phones

Seriously Uncool

The list here could be quite long.  I’ll pick just a couple.

The Minister of Communications is seriously uncool for failing to understand the telecommunications marketplace in a fairly profound way, and for the implications of that failure on everything.

Telkom is uncool for being one of the most litigious companies in South Africa.  They’ll happily tie anything up in the courts.  The old saying “a telco is a law firm with an antenna on top” was never more true.

As I say, the list is completely subjective.  Love to hear corrections, additions, rants, etc.

Telecoms in South Africa: Apres moi, le deluge

Published
by
Steve Song
on 29 August 2008
in Telecom Policy
. 0 Comments

In a landmark decision today, the High Court of South Africa ruled that everyone in possession of a Value Added Network Service (VANS) license was entitled to “self-provide”.  What this means is that every Internet Service Provider (ISP) in South Africa is entitled to compete with the likes of Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, and Neotel.  In one fell swoop, the market has gone from 4 players to conceivably over 600 players.

At the root of this change has been the dispute around how existing VANS licenses should be converted in the context of the “new” Electronic Communications Act of 2005.  The Minister of Communications has argued that only some VANS licenses should be converted to full “infrastructure” licenses which would allow companies with VANS licenses to build out their own infrastructure.   In essence, this was an attempt by the Minister to perpetuate the “managed liberalisation” process that began almost 14 years ago.

That attempt appears to have backfired on the Department of Communications and their Minister.  The Minister could have issued a general invitation for companies to apply for an infrastructure license (i-ECNS license) and considered each application on its own merits.  Instead, by attempting to influence the license conversion process which is the purview of the regulator (ICASA), they provoked a court challenge from one of the companies in the conversion process (Altech).

The court decision, handed down this morning, utterly rejected the validity of the Minister’s attempt to influence ICASA’s handling of the conversion process and completed validated the Altech’s contention that VANS should be able to self-provision.

Since, the Act states that all licenses must be converted on terms no less favourable than their existing terms, this means that ICASA is bound to grant infrastructure licenses to all 600 VANS licensees.  Great news for telecoms competition in South Africa!

Unfortunately this is just a battle won but not the war.  There are many other issues to be addressed.  For a start, the fees associated with the telecom infrastructure licenses.  Given that only a short time ago Neotel paid R100 million Rand for their license, I can see some drama brewing on what sort of annual fees should be charged to the newly converted licensees.  The ideal scenario in my opinion would be to have fees tied to revenue and only have the fees kick in after a certain threshold of revenue had been reached.  This would contribute to lowering the bar to market entry.

Another and perhaps more significant issue to be addressed is the allocation of spectrum.  There are lots of lessons learned from around the world.  Why can’t spectrum be auctioned in South Africa in a transparent and open manner.  Lack of transparency must surely be one of the biggest barriers to investment.

However, one battle at a time.  You can see the general expressions of joy from the South African community.    Arthur Goldstuck’s Oh Frabjous Day is worth reading as is the general outpouring of joy by likes of Dominic Cull and Ant Brooks (and a few hundred others) on the mybroadband.co.za discussion list.

Ellipsis have posted a copy of the judgement.  Can’t wait to see how the DoC and the Minister react.

The OLPC Effect

Published
by
Steve Song
on 4 August 2008
in Telecom Policy
. 0 Comments

he One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project comes in for a lot of criticism for being, among other things, “centralised and top-down”. Critics also argue that academia and philanthropy should not be interfering in areas where the market is clearly in a better place both to innovate and to sustain new technologies in the marketplace.

I think it is worth pointing out that even if the OLPC is a wrong-headed initiative, it has had the very important effect of attracting computer manufacturers into the low-cost laptop market. Since the announcement of the OLPC, there have been at least a dozen new low-cost laptops announced in the market, and some such as the Asus Eee PC seem to be selling in quantities which indicate that the low-cost laptop has come to stay. This is good news for developing countries.

Equally, the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) project, which has sparked so much controversy around ownership and access models, appears to have unleashed a flurry of undersea cable initiatives. And while the EASSy project has ended up with as complicated an ownership framework as it is possible to imagine, the public debate around Open Access that it engendered arguably has been a spur for other cable initiatives such as SEACOM, to choose a transparent, Open Access ownership model.

The lesson: Sometimes doing the wrong thing with technology is better than doing nothing. Sometimes.

P.S.  The “OLPC effect” is a term I dreamt up for a commentary I was asked to write on a paper by Alberto Escudero-Pascual on Tools and Technologies for Equitable Access. Alberto was pretty much bang on in his paper so I had to think up something new.  :-) These are part of a series by the APC on Equitable Access.

How To Be Transparent in Fibre Optic Cable Deployment

Published
by
Steve Song
on 9 May 2008
in Telecom Policy and Undersea Cables
. 0 Comments

Bill St. Arnaud points out that Pipe International, who are building an undersea cable from Sydney to Guam, have taken a completely transparent approach to communicating about project development and progress. Even to the point of having dynamic online maps of cable development.

Pipe International have set up a blog, a progress table, discussion forum, and photo/video gallery.  Here in South Africa, Infraco could take a page out of their book.  Fin24.com recently posted news of a statement released by the SA government communication and information service on Tuesday May 6th that the African West Coast Cable (AWCC) would be built by Infraco in time for the World Cup in 2010. The cable would have a whopping 3.84 terabits in capacity and will cover 13,000km from South Africa to the Uk stopping at 10 countries along the way.

I tried to follow up on this article looking for the statement mentioned in the article but it wasn’t available on the SA Communication and Information Services site. I wrote to request a copy of the statement and was sent a month-old statement regarding Infraco. Still looking for it if anyone has a pointer.

It would be amazing if the AWCC/Infraco initiative were to take a similar approach to Pipe International. It would increase both buy-in and confidence in the initiative. An updated table of African undersea cable initiatives is available here.

Operators Response to SA Government’s Proposed Rapid Deployment Guidelines

Published
by
Steve Song
on 24 April 2008
in Telecom Policy
. 0 Comments

On the 27th of February 2008, the Department of Communications published a notice inviting comments on Proposed Guidelines For Rapid Deployment of Electronic Communications Facilities in Terms of the Electronic Communications ACT, 2005 (ACT NO. 36 of 2005). Among other things the guidelines propose the mandatory minimum 51% “African or South African” (is it just me who feels jarred by that phrase?) ownership of all submarine cables landing in South Africa (SAT3 excepted).

In a heretofore unprecedented move, Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Neotel, and Cell-C have made a joint submission in response to the proposed guidelines. Previous industry submissions have often been complementary but this is the first time every major telecom operator has spoken with a single voice. One could argue that this is a sign of widespread collusion among incumbent telecom operators in South Africa or perhaps simply a sign of collective industry indignation at the counterproductive steps being taken by the Ministry of Communications.

The submission makes a number of arguments.

51% African or South African Ownership

The operators argue that insisting on 51% “African or South African” ownership doesn’t make a lot of sense as it may inhibit the spread of competition in undersea cable access (the IWTGC cable comes to mind) and South African companies already comply with BEE requirements. The submission goes further to argue that the Minister has exceeded her authority in using Section 21 of the Electronic Communications Act to require majority African or South African ownership of undersea cables. It is hard to deny this argument and indeed to understand why the DoC is sticking to its guns on this issue.

Rapid Deployment

The submission also argues that the proposed guidelines, rather then facilitating “rapid deployment”, actually introduce an additional approval stage which will only increase the amount of red tape. The guidelines also do not “provide procedures and processes for obtaining any necessary permit, authorisation, approval or other governmental authority” as is indicated in Section 21 of the Electronic Communications Act. The operators argue that the guidelines would be better described as “Submarine Cable Authorisations”. Again, it is pretty hard to argue with their case. It seems evident that the “rapid deployment” guidelines, as they are currently described, are going to result in slower deployment .

Trampling on ICASA

The operators also point out that much of what is covered within the proposed guidelines, is already covered by the authority of the Electronic Communications Act and ICASA. They have declared their intention to ignore the guidelines as they believe they have “no legal standing.”

The Economics of Undersea Cables

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by this submission at least until I came to Chapter 7 entitled “The Economics of Undersea Cables” in which:

“the operators noted that although they support the principle of open access there still needs to be incentives for operators to invest in cables; and thus the operators support the concept of justifiable price discrimination between investors and non investors”

they say that:

“If a consortium, by virtue of an ‘open access principle’ was forced to sell bandwidth to investors and non investors at the same price – there would simply be no incentive to invest.”

This is what I dislike about the term “open access“. People seem to lay claim to it under almost any circumstances, so much so that it has lost some of its weight as a strategic approach. Surely it is not hard for the operators to see that if they are an investor in the cable and they are forced to buy bandwidth at the same price as non-investors, that they would still enjoy a de facto discount as a result of the profits from their overall cable investment. Investing in undersea cables is a profit-making enterprise on its own, as Seacom (with no telco operator investment) provides evidence of. Open Access proposes structural separation of communication infrastructure to increase consumer choice at every level of communications infrastructure from cables to data to services. This poorly argued and manifestly incorrect explanation of the “economics of undersea cables” mars what is otherwise an important message to the Department of Communications.