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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">Hi</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">I would like to follow up on Michuki’s HO: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">there's no broadband in Kenya</i>”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">1stly, Do we need a definition for broadband? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">In the UK, Wanadoo accused by rival service providers (BT Group and Telewest) of “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">confusing consumers by promoting services with speeds of 150kbps or 256kbps as broadband</i>” </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">(</font><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3563320.stm"><span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; text-underline: none"><font size="3">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3563320.stm</font></span></a><font size="3">.)</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">2ndly, this article that a friend shared with me provides a good reason why we should seriously be considering local content development. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">Companies such as Youtube, facebook, myspace have large audiences in developing countries, Kenya being no exception; however these countries have limited and expensive broadband, generate little advertising revenue and require more resources (servers, bandwidth). </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">To reduce costs associated with providing services some internet companies have taken “the drastic step of cutting off developing countries” from accessing their services!! </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">(</font><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss"><span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; text-underline: none"><font size="3">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss</font></span></a><font size="3">)</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">Kind regards</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">Mwende</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><font size="3">Disclaimer: Views expressed here are the author’s own</font></span></i></p>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Michuki Mwangi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michuki@swiftkenya.com" target="_blank">michuki@swiftkenya.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hi Walu, et al,<br><br>Access:<br><br>I believe that we need to move beyond the marketing hype into the<br>
realities. IMHO there's no broadband in Kenya. In my basic understanding<br>Broadband means affordable and fast connectivity. What we have is<br>average-to-unreliable connectivity that costs more than its worth.<br><br>
I believe the ongoing investments into wireless solutions while they<br>work will continue to hold us into the pre-broadband phase for a long<br>time to come.<br><br>Mobile broadband seems to be a working solution but their ability to<br>
scale will continue to pose challenges on quality.<br><br>Therefore investment in fixed infrastructure solutions like FTTH and<br>FTTC are going to be important considerations to be made if we are to<br>leap into broadband phase.<br>
<br>At this point, it would be ideal if regulators would open up the last<br>mile (within residential spaces) for anyone interested to invest in that<br>space with fixed infrastructure.<br><br>The de facto point here is that for a long time residential access has<br>
been neglected for a long time. The focus has been mainly at CBDs until<br>the mobile 2G and 3G solutions were introduced.<br><br>Maybe policy has a role to play in providing incentives for players who<br>make efforts in providing fixed infrastructure in residential locations.<br>
<br>Affordability:<br><br>The pricing will still remain high until we have a inexpensive local<br>loop solution.<br><br>As far as the cables go it will be good to know more details before<br>folks can make conclusions. For instance is the 500-100USD per month for<br>
bits or bytes?. It would be good to know what pricing model the cable<br>operators want to have in place for instance does one buy a circuit from<br>point A to B or does one buy a circuit with Internet on it already?.<br>
<br>Selling circuits are the ideal way to go hence it allows operators and<br>others to buy large pipes STM1 (144 Mbps) from say Nairobi to London.<br>Its cheaper to buy transit capacity from London which goes for about $10<br>
Per MB per month the other costs will be for the circuit back to Nairobi<br>and that can be low if talking of big pipes. But then the models are not<br>clear to me so i cannot give conclusions on what is.<br><br>Content:<br>
<br>The only way we can drive up content availability is by placing the<br>requisite infrastructure. As it stands, few host content locally the<br>pricing is beyond and facilities are few hence higher pricing.<br><br>In Kenya my estimated total collocation/hosting capacity available is<br>
well under 2,000m2 and am being kind here. In Europe one company<br>Telehouse has 30,000m2 of datacenter space 20,000m2 of which is in the UK.<br><br>We have afew factors in favor of Kenya for instance cheap land and<br>professional Labor (we cannot compare to EU rates). The only expense is<br>
power but we have abundant solar energy that can serve the demand for<br>green data-centers one would wish to build. As some of you may know<br>Europe ran out of hosting space back in 2006 and has lead to the<br>emergence of Asia as the next collo destination.<br>
<br>Its upon the region to realise that we could be home to the future<br>worlds data centers with low cost energy, land and labor in our favor.<br><br>That way we have both local and international content hosted locally and<br>
this will drive costs of access to lows never imagined.<br><br>Quality:<br><br>Quality of service will improve;<br><br>1) With better and affordable local loop infrastructure (not over<br>subscribed wireless base stations) - i understand that the regulatory<br>
licensing structure had a negative impact on this as operators had to<br>pay an annual fee per installed site?. Probably fixed wired solutions<br>that have no recurrent costs are the way to go?<br><br>2) Increased percentage of locally hosted/accessed content (peering<br>
traffic) which is subject to less contention and better access speeds<br><br>3) better pricing models on transit capacity which will reduce the<br>contention ratios given by service providers<br><br>4) More training of engineers in building scalable services and routing<br>
infrastructure.<br><br>Regards,<br><font color="#888888"><br>Michuki.<br></font>
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