[kictanet] The Death of Landlines?

Fri Jul 20 22:30:39 EAT 2012

The problem with the landlines has nothing to do with Telkom Kenya Limited
(TKL), but has everything to do with the rest of us, yes all of us as
Kenyans. TKL as a company will always be happy to offer better services to
her customers in this competitive and saturated telecommunications market
place.

Investment in copper is a very expensive undertaking. It is expensive to
procure and  install copper cables more than any other form of
telecommunications infrastructure the world over. Many companies who
operate copper lines make profit by striving to derive maximum benefit from
copper over long durations of time (maybe 5 to 10 years of service). But of
late, the Kenyan populace has developed a very high appetite for harvesting
copper such that even getting 24hours of copper in the ground is becoming a
nightmare!

I know this from my previous experience while working for TKL.

TKL has a maintenance team. Every time an outage occurs (most cases will be
that somebody has cut-out and stolen some copper cable), they will respond
by visiting the affected areas and replacing the stolen cables. But in 99%
of the cases, the replaced cable will be stolen the very night it is
installed! The thieves will keep an eye and immediately the cable is
replaced, they will come harvesting again!!!

Now the question arises: How many times will the company be financially
capable of replacing cables that get stolen 24 hours later?

I remember with nostalgia some times back when overhead copper cables used
to run parallel to the major roads in Kenya; even to the remote village
where I come from, we had copper cables providing telecommunications
services to the local post office. It was common to see KPLC power cables
on one side of the road and Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation
(KPTC) cables on the other. How comes KPLC cables still remain standing
while KPTC cables are today non existent? Do anyone believe KPTC initiated
a project to harvest the cables and kept them in a store somewhere?

People in this country; and perhaps people in the ICT industry have made
money by profiteering from copper cable vandalism!

It is still common to get fixed lines in developed countries, and I
guarantee that fixed lines will remain the best form of providing
telecommunication services for several years into the future.

The ministry of communications (thanks to Dr. Ndemo) has done her bit by
supporting the industry by introducing strict penalty for cable vandals. We
need to do our part by encouraging community policing and ensuring that all
cable vandals are identified, arrested and charged in court.

TKL would love to have everyone on landlines, in fact TKL would be very
happy to install additional landlines if we were to stop stealing them. In
my view, it may not be very correct to believe that TKL employes are very
incompetent and  just too lazy to support the infrastructure which
generates revenue for the company.

We have identified a problem, and the problem is extremely unsustainable
levels of cable theft than has been experienced in any part of the world
before. We  need to see people here generating ideas on how we can root out
cable vandalism in our society. We need ideas on methods of providing
infrastructure sustainability in our country. The academia, the industry
and the society have roles to play to see a future of development into
vision 2030, a future of honesty, a future devoid of business malpractices
that have seen some organizations benefiting using in appropriate means by
sabotaging others...

TKL, our companies, our institutions and all our people need such ideas.
This should be the focus....

Regards
Philip

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Edith Adera <eadera at idrc.or.ke> wrote:
>
>> Lister’s****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Does anyone know what’s going on at…is it Orange Telkom or Telkom Kenya?
>> about landlines. When corporate lines go down it seems they are not being
>> repaired, is this a sign of the “death of landlines”?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Seriously need to understand what is going on?
>>
>>
>>
>
> Personally, I think that unless someone has something special to carry on
> top of the copper, then it's that time in life they drop the "landline".
> There is nothing special about them.
> It's also pretty easy these days for an organization to "change their
> contact phone numbers"  - by a simple change of "Our Contacts" on the
> website, or a mailshot to their suppliers/clients.
>
> Sorry I did not answer your question directly, but TKL/Orange has been
> working on redoing their cabling in many areas. Perhaps this is what is
> affecting you. I understand how difficult it is to do business with Orange
> when it comes to fixing problems. Their Customer Care still sux, and the
> bureaucracy is still very much embedded. I resorted to walking to the
> Exchange and seeking out the technicians in order to have my problems with
> landlines addressed. Maybe you should do just that!
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
> Nairobi,KE
> +254733744121/+254722743223
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
> I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> kictanet mailing list
> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke
> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
>
> Unsubscribe or change your options at
> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/philip.adar%40gmail.com
>
> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform
> for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and
> regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT
> sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
>
> KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors
> online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth,
> share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do
> not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
>

-- 
Regards

Philip Adar
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20120720/0dc52eca/attachment.htm>