[kictanet] Fwd: SV: [AfrISPA.Discuss] Undersea cable plan tangled in acrimony inSouth Africa

Thu Sep 13 19:32:44 EAT 2007

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 at 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 at jambo.co.ke>
>> To: <kai.wulff at kdn.co.ke>
>> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions"
>> <kictanet at 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 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
>>
> === message truncated ===
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Need a vacation? Get great deals
> to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
> http://travel.yahoo.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> kictanet mailing list
> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke
> http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
>
> This message was sent to: bitange at jambo.co.ke
> Unsubscribe or change your options at
> http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bitange%40jambo.co.ke
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by Jambo MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
> ---------------------------------------------
> "easy access to the world"
>
>