[kictanet] FW: [www.eThinkTankTz.org] ICT BACKBONE: A solution in search of a problem or is it just a white elephant?

Tue Jun 17 15:20:28 EAT 2008

Dear Colleagues,

As we await our own FON, there could be some lessons from this experience. One year after the commissioning of the government funded terrestrial fibre optic network in Tanzania, the network has remained relatively idle. Some basic business fundamentals could have been ignored or assumed. Read on.

Harry

From: eThinkTankTz at yahoogroups.com [mailto:eThinkTankTz at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rama Mwikalo
Sent: 17 June 2008 00:36
To: ethinktanktz at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [www.eThinkTankTz.org] ICT BACKBONE: A solution in search of a problem or is it just a white elephant?

National ICT Optical Fiber Backbone: 
Is this a solution in search of a problem or just a white elephant?

It is a sad indictment of the current state of the ICT backbone infrastructure when a newly commissioned ultra-modern optical fiber system is sitting idle with absolutely no customers; zero. This may sound like an exaggeration but it is not a very big one! Apart from the standard internal and management traffic required to keep the system chugging and humming along, there are practically no paying customers to speak of on the system.  The old adage, some may say myth, that says “if you build it, they will come” was probably taken too literally by the companies that decided to invest their hard-earned T-shillings in the ICT optical fiber infrastructure. The system has been idle ever since it was officially commissioned little over a year ago, according to Charles Makakala – a member and regular contributor to the Tanzania e-Think Tank online discussion group.  All we can say is that whatever business plan was used to justify this investment, it
was not a plan for spiking the ball on the 20 yard - to use an American football metaphor.

By all accounts, what has been implemented is an ultra-modern state of the art transmission system based on the latest high capacity DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) fiber optics technology. According to Mr Makakala, the system has been deployed across nine regional traffic hubs including some smaller towns, and it has an estimated transport capacity of nearly 4 Gigabit per second. Just so we all know, this represents enough bandwidth to carry up to 400 times the current voice traffic generated by all major mobile phone operators namely, Vodacom, Celtel, Tigo and Zantel. 

It would have been hilarious if it weren’t downright cruel for these well-meaning folks to have invested so much to achieve so little. This is undoubtedly an important national venture and the service is desperately needed for the development of our country, so what went wrong?

No one could have expected – not by any stretch of imagination – that in a country that still requires more ICT investment – not less – there would be a glut of data transmission bandwidth sitting idle and begging for customers but there are no takers. In the meantime, Tanzanians of all shapes and stripes are burdened with one of the highest and out-of-reach telecommunication service tariffs in Africa. Needless to say, there is a huge disconnect; it makes very little sense and clearly deserves a detailed examination and analysis. 

Considering the way things have turned out, perhaps we should begin by speculating or asking what was the business plan that was used to justify the implementation the optical fiber infrastructure that has been deployed and commissioned?  Who were the targeted customers and were they consulted to determine what it would take to get them on board as paying customers?  These are basic market research questions…  If the ICT backbone was built hoping “customers will come”, well we should not be surprised now that the chickens are coming home to roost and the outcome is so dramatically different from the investors expectations not to mention prayers.

Some of the basic and fundamental market research and analysis questions that should have been asked are: 

§         Who are likely to be the major customers for the optical fiber super-highway and where are they geographically located? 
§         What are they planning to use the optical fiber bandwidth for? 
§         How much aggregate bandwidth is need and, more importantly, where is that bandwidth needed? 
§         What special interfaces are needed by the customers?
§         What kind of problems are these “potential customers” currently experiencing that the optical fiber infrastructure would be ideally suited to solve? 
§         How much are they expecting and willing to pay for the bandwidth in order to subscribe to the new service?
§         What other competing technologies are available and how much are they paying today?  

We can delve a little deeper into some of these questions a little later to try to come up with possible answers that may be helpful feedback into the next ICT infrastructure project whether privately or publicly funded. As a way of illustrations, I am planning to use broadband internet access, mobile phone and triple-play which are considered to be the “killer applications” (to employ an overused term) for the national fiber infrastructure.

I will also say a few words about the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of assigning the management of a government funded ICT optical fiber backbone to TTCL. Since I am not employed by any of these companies I can afford not to take sides in the proverbial “mwamba ngoma” tradition.  I get chills down my spine when I hear that the mobile phone companies are among the targeted customers for this government funded initiative in which TTCL is the designated operator. Last time I checked, TTCL was still competing against the very customers it is supposed to serve!  God help us should, in the unlikely event, the system encounter a catastrophic failure, a possibility that cannot be ruled out; would TTCL be expected to give top priority to its own mobile phone customers over its competitors or are they likely to be fair and even-handed?  

And so we bear witness to the specter of the least successful mobile phone service provider trying to bail out its more successful competitors! It takes two leaps of faith to believe that TTCL will be even-handed and quite frankly, I am not at all surprised why the targeted customers appear to be dragging their feet.  The business model needs to be revisited. And as I said earlier, I intend to address this issue and others in a follow up contribution.

Rama Mwikalo
Technology Consultant
Silicon Valley, California, USA
(512) 947-7668

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