Dennis, Your view here is valid. However, to me you are trying to justify why bandwidth costs will not go down. 3 months ago, no one would EVER have imagined that we would be calling at 3 bob per minute to any network!! Infact, I could have written a longer article justifying why Zain and Safaricom cannot lower their costs. Someone checked into the scene somewhere and changed all that....now you know we can talk cheaper.... I am not asking ISPs to charge unreasonably less....the entire system probably needs to be looked at.... Safaricom's strategy has been MASS MARKET and we have seen great success with that. Perhaps the ISPs need to change strategy, renegotiate with cable providers and their suppliers so they can lower costs and attract more users - hence (perhaps) higher revenues. I refuse to subscribe to your view that Internet costs may not drop soon and so I will sit back and do nothing. Instead, i appreciate that, will voice my concerns and desire for the drop WHILE at the same time, continue paying the same costs and using the same to achieve as much as achievable. If South Africans sat back and said....all other african countries (i hear they dont consider themselves to be in Africa) have got independence and we will not get lets do nothing about it....they wouldnt really have independence. Plus I am sure in this forum, there is someone/some people from the ISPs who are looking at whether its actually possible to change the price and get a large volume of subscribers - this model was successully run by Wananchi Online some years back...i thought it worked well for them....I wonder if you remember that. Now with Fibre....it might even work better than how it worked for Wananchi. Regards On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi@gmail.com> wrote:
My Opinion, as Published in September 2010 Issue of CIO East Africa: "Internet costs may not drop to the much anticipated levels soon. Kenyans, or rather Africans should appreciate this sooner than later. Despite numerous fancy visions with zeros thrown in aka Vision 2030 in Kenya and Vision 2020 in Rwanda and lots of lobbying from government executives, African subscribers may take long before seeing costs drop from the $300 average per Megabyte to the European sub $10 per MB. Why?
If you went to business class, they must have taught you the differences between businesses and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). If you a re lucky eniough, they might have taught you a thing or tow about stakeholders. Businesses are entities that are entirely in operations to procur/manufacture goods & services and sell them to a consumer at a profit. NGOs on the other hand try to be less vulgar by lowering their profit operations and getting people elsewhere to foot the costs. The government does not mind about making profits but has citizens to foot its bills.
The communication sector is almost entirely composed of businesses, including the ISP sector which sells internet to us. Internet to the East African region is now supplied via sparkling new sub marine cables, which with the exception of the TEAMS cable, were laid down by businesses. The owners of this entities and the shareholders are looking to see a profit in their investments. For the short term that they want to recoup the cost, they will sell internet at a cost of about $200 per mbps.
Well, in that case, you think your ISP should be modest enough and sell you the internet at a cost that does not exceed $250 per mbps. Well, wrong.
Immediately the internet arrives on our East African coasts, many things happen. The ISPs have to procure fiber cable cheaply from China. In addition, they acquire some networking equipment and some plastic pipes, then hire a contractor to dig a trench to lay the cable.
Well, to lay the cable in a trench, the African way of business has to be applied. The local government and the ministry of information will have to approve. the local government does this at a fee. At the same time, officials in charge at the local government and Ministries need to be reminded to make this approvals and this comes in the form of kickbacks. Additionally, were it not for the Mayor, elected by the local area councilor where the cable passes through, the local government would be unable to make a decision, and for this effort, a little money in their personal bank accounts is all that can be done.
At border crossings, it becomes worse, an ISP will have to keep shuttling from one national regulator to another in order to get a go ahead to dig across the no - mans land. This can be helped if a few officials received some personal cheques to put in "out-off-work" effort, otherwise the ISP can use a slower microwave link.
After all this trouble, an ISP will not share the massive bandwidth that remains underutilized in its cable with a fellow ISP. They will use this as a tactic to make sure the ISP suffers from delays and additional expenses that will make its pricing above the reach of many subscribers. The least help that ISPs will offer each other is hiring a truck to go and unearth a competitors cable, tie it to the back and drag the cable till the truck arrives back where it was hired from.
As you slowly drive over the multiple trenches and mounds that indicate recently cables laid accross your highway, remember that your ISP is a business that has to bill you for all incurred costs and make a profit in the process. Pull a cable today!"
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