[kictanet] Not EASSy, but how far is TEAMS?

Wed Sep 12 19:19:11 EAT 2007

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 at 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 at 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 at ssvl.kth.se>
> >> Date: 9 September 2007 21:52:19 GMT+03:00
> >> To: <Discuss at afrispa.org>
> >> Subject: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan
> tangled in
> >> acrimony inSouth Africa
> >> Reply-To: Discuss at 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
> 
=== message truncated ===

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