[kictanet] IG Discussions- Day 2 of 10: Infrastructure Issues-Submarine Cables

[John Walubengo]

Welcome to day 2. Hopefully it would be more interactive than yesterday...I want to believe that the paralysis in our politics has not infected and paralysed us. And just like during the cold war, scientists and technocrats accross the divide continued to exchange internet packets inspite of...

Nway without too much digression, today we want to interrogate several assumptions about the long awaited submarine cable(s) that are poised to hit our coastal city of Mombasa.  SEACOM, TEAMs, EASsy are all expected to be operational starting July 09 (SEACOM), TEAMS (Sep 09) and EASsy (2010?)

Here's my take/opinion on their impact based on a scale of Low(1), Moderate(2) and High(3)

i) Access:- Score=1, Low Impact on Access
The undersea cable is a top-tier infrastructure that has no impact at the (User) Access level.  User access level is a function of the maturity of the domestic(local) infrastructure.  Unless this is developed proportionately, we shall have an an awkward situation similar to a country with top-notch Universities (Submarine cable) but no Primary and Secondary Schools to provide the students (no Access)...

ii) Affordability: Score= 2,Moderate Impact on Internet Service Costs.
Yes, the prices are likely to go down from the current retail levels of about 2500USD per 1MB to btwn 500-1000USD per 1MB of bandwidth.  But I have serious doubts if this prices will be sustained at these low levels because the investors in these cables are not in it for fun - they have calculated ROI targets that anticipate a huge uptake of the bandwidth.  In the likely event that this uptake failes to happen, I see prices beginning to go up by the end of the 1st year of the cable operation.  The investors in the cable will then begin to milk the few subscribers who may have jumped onto the highway in order to pay for the cost of the capital sunk into the cables.  Yes, maybe I just cant get over the nasty SAT3  experience where the submarine fiber cable landed in the West African region with little impact on pricing.

iii) Content: Score=1, Low Impact on Content.
Incidentally, digital content should be independent of infrastructure.  I mean, we do not need the submarine cable for our Lecturers at the universities to have their notes in digital form. We do not need the submarine cable to digitize government records.  Content is intricately related to eventual cost of Internet Service and ideally should be fully developed before the submarine cable.

iv) Quality. Score=2, Moderate Impact on Internet Quality.
"Broadband Quality of Internet" is what every service provider is screaming about. But Broadband standard in .KE is way off the mark when compared to India or Europe. I will remain sceptical until proven otherwise but I forsee the undersea cable having moderate impact on quality because of our poorly managed domestic User and  Telco networks. Most Telco networks that will act as gateways to the submarine cable are full of Viruses, Spam, Proxies, and ill-configured Servers, Routers and Switches that introduce congestion and bottlenecks rather facilate broadband access to the Submarine cable.

We have today to hear your views on this...and the floor is open.

walu.