[kictanet] Day 3 of 10: Day 3 - Hierarchy of IGO & ISPs

Thu Apr 26 15:39:11 EAT 2007

Thanx LK for your views on this theme.  I was also quite
doubtful about the strategy of eliminating the 'middle-man'
(ISP) because the wholesaler (IGO) may not necessarily pass
the cost savings downwards - I for one would simply be
happy to increase my profit margins following the demise of
the ISPs (& why not?)....

...think of TKL who have both IGO and ISP licenses, the
Internet Report suprisingly found that their dial-up
internet service was actually one of the highest (200% of
the Gross national Income) in the Internet Service
provision market...

Indeed I was scared of 'losing' the Wholesale-Resale
relationship b/w IGO and ISPs and this morning (at the
KICTANet media forum) the DG (CCK) shed some light on what
might actually be the final inter-play when he visualised
an Internet Market structure with three players: (network)
Infrastructure Developers, Content Developers and Content
Providers.   I see current IGO becoming Infrastructure
Developers while ISPs maturing to become
Content/Appilication Providers.  Thus both retaining their
relevance in a new dispensation...

walu.

--- Lucy Kimani <lkimani at comnews.co.ke> wrote:

> Walubengo:
> 
> As the newest kid on the block, and totally biased:-)
> 
> Here is my pesa nane:
> 
> I see this discussion in two ways, first I agree that the
> separation b/w
> IGO and ISPs be dissolved but not limited to only the
> IGOs, but this
> should swing both ways meaning that ISPs are also free to
> be IGOs without
> having to apply for the different licenses to build their
> own backbones if
> they so desire.  Issue would of course be the frequencies
> how to share
> this very scarce resource fairly among all without
> discremination
> especially knowing what we already know about the
> spectrum allocation so
> far, I think this is a tall order indeed.
> 
> Secondly I doubt expanding the IGOs scope of reach will
> resolve the issue
> which is reducing costs for the consumer.  The idea
> sounds great but in
> reality the IGOs can barely keep up with their current
> workload and adding
> more on their plate would be a disaster in my opinion.  I
> would not wish
> any consumers the pain of dealing directly with the IGOs
> and leave them to
> do what they do best -- building infrastructure and I
> would say we leave
> them to that until we have fibre available throughout
> Kenya then perhaps
> that would be an ideal time to review the situation.
> 
> Finally, I would leave the ISP/IGO relationship as is,
> but with freedom
> for either to move either way simply because market
> forces can be counted
> on to dictate the trend, and you can bet right now there
> are a number of
> CEOs working over time to counter Alunite's initiative
> because thats what
> they are paid to do.. Think about Netzero who offer a
> free service in the
> U.S but are still able to survive in that ISP space
> because they serve a
> certain clientele.  Consumers are well on their way to
> getting what they
> deserve and I say Amen to that.
> 
> LK
> 
> > Thanx Alex for your comments on Day 1, for a moment I
> was
> > bracing myself for a 10 day Online monologue :-(! as
> > opposed to the planned Online dialogue. Incidentally,
> > belated Comments on previous days themes shall remain
> > welcome - just click on the correct subject line and
> make
> > your appropriate contributions...
> >
> > Anyway back to today's theme- The Question of Internet
> > Gateway Operators (IGO, the Wholesalers of Internet
> > Bandwidth) vs Internet Service Providers (ISPs, the
> > Retailers of Internet Bandwidth).
> >
> > The report recommends that seperation b/w IGO and ISPs
> be
> > dissolved.  This is because the current structure
> > Internet-> IGO -> ISP -> Consumers is considered
> > unnecessarily too long.  Apparently the ISP as we know
> them
> > today are not adding significant value - instead they
> are
> > adding cost to the service and probably degraging the
> > quality of the Internet eventually delivered to the
> > Customers.
> >
> > Cutting down the middle-man (ISPs) may offset the costs
> and
> > while increasing the quality of the internet eventually
> > delivered to the Consumer.  Is this assumption true?
> Does
> > allowing IGO to directly deal with Consumer result in
> > cheaper Internet Services while improving on the
> quality of
> > the internet?
> >
> > 1 day on this theme, at the least, I do hope to get
> some
> > reactions at from any IGOs and ISPs.
> >
> > walu.
> >
> >
> >
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> 
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