So it was with pleasure that I accepted the invitation to brief the South African Minister of Communication along with RIA’s Executive Director. We had a good exchange with Minister Padayachie. At the end, he requested us to meet with the councillors and Chair of the Independent Communication Authority of South Asia, which we did. I had taught at a course Alison Gillwald had organized for the councillors of ICASA back when it was chaired by Mandla Langa in 2001. We had a wide-ranging discussion on topics ranging from broadband quality of service and defining essential facilities.

LIRNEasia will be happy to make whatever contribution we can to help RIA and the South African authorities realize the immense potential of ICTs for growth, poverty alleviation and job creation in South Africa.

Namibia has led SA in cutting call termination rates — the fees the operators charge one another to carry calls between their networks. The rates have been cut to 30c/minute, but MTC rivals claim the company has not passed on the benefits to consumers in the form of lower retail rates.

It’s a situation mirrored in SA, where the country’s two largest mobile operators, MTN and Vodacom, have decided not to reduce their off-network call rates despite a cut in termination rates on 1 March.

In some respects, SA has followed the Namibian example in reducing termination rates. The NCC forced down the rates to 30c/minute over an 18-month period; in SA, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) is bringing them down over a three-year period to 40c/minute.

This is a manifestation of a general problem, of suppliers in oligopolistic markets not passing on cost reductions to consumers. When international call termination charges came down in Asian countries, many developed-country operators did not make the corresponding reduction in the retail prices. In the Namibian case the regulator has authority over the operator trying to pocket the difference. In the international case, the only pressure that can be brought to bear is by competitive operators using cards or other means.

THEY may not have the name recognition of a Google or a Yahoo!, but they can claim to belong in the same league. The websites of Digital Sky Technologies (DST) account for more than 70% of page-views on the Russian-language internet. Naspers is Africa’s biggest media group, both offline and online. And Tencent is China’s largest internet company by market capitalisation—and the third-largest in the world.

Now these firms are increasingly making their presence felt beyond their home markets. Between them they have invested in dozens of internet firms around the globe. The most adventurous of the three, DST, has already moved west—and paid top dollar for stakes in fast-growing American companies, notably Facebook, the world’s biggest social network.

The course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of decision-makers in telecom and related sectors in developing countries and emerging economies. The aim of the programme is to address the many challenges posed by the current stage of telecom and ICT reform to governments, regulatory agencies, operators and other stakeholders.

For more information on the course, click here.

Alison is the featured dinner speaker at CPRsouth4 in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on December 7th. I am sure she will speak to this court case and the challenges facing policy intellectuals in environments like ours. The relevant excerpt of the judgment is given below.

Three principal grounds for the alleged perception of bias are relied upon. First, the Link Centre received funding from some of the complainants in the SAVA complaint. This is disposed of quite easily. The Link Centre is a research and training body in the field of information and communications technology, policy, regulation and management. It is the only major organization in South Africa that focuses on these matters. It has published internationally and presented papers at conferences. While it is correct that the some of the complainants funded the Centre, the Link Centre also received funding from the government and from Vodacom, a company in which Telkom had a 50 percent shareholding. Its largest funding during the time of the investigation was from Vodacom. Telkom was approached for funding as well but declined to contribute. The donations from industry participants were less than a fifth of local donor contributions and a fraction of the multimillion Rand foreign donor contribution from the Canadian Independent Development Research Centre. The second ground is that, the advisory board of the Link Centre included various people who were closely involved with the complainants at the relevant time, in particular, the co-president of SAVA and the co-president of ISPA. Thirdly, the authors of the Link Centre report made statements and pronouncements that were highly critical of Telkom prior to being employed to prepare the report. These statements are to the effect that Telkom’s profits were outrageous; that ICASA’s decisions were regularly overturned because of Telkom’s influence; and that Telkom by using its monopoly power sought to retard growth of the value-added network and internet sectors and so interfered with the effectiveness of South African business. For example, Ms Gillwald, one of the authors of the Report, stated that ‘a consequence of Telkom’s unchecked dominance has also had a chilling effect on the partially-liberalised value-added services segment of the telecommunications market, which includes the internet service providers.’ None of the statements or publications ascribed to the authors of the report was denied: however, all claims of bias were rejected, and Ms Gillwald deposed that the views of the authors of the report were founded on research.

Anybody could have guessed this. It is unimaginable that entire world will go through a recession simultaneously. Not everyone can be losers for too long. There should be winners somewhere. For example, what would the US firms that find their human resources costs, logically do? They outsource to Bangalore. So the BPO industry in India grows. Peter’s loss becomes Patel’s gain.

The Economist today presented the evidence.

MOODY’S Economy.com has mapped the geographic spread of the worst global downturn since the Depression. All of North America is in recession now. In Europe only Norway, Slovenia and Slovakia have avoided a similar fate, although Moody’s reckons these countries are on the brink of a downturn. Emerging Asia looks cheerier, although the small export-led economies of Singapore and Hong Kong are shrinking, as are Malaysia and Thailand. Even the BRICs are looking a bit diminished, with downturns in both Brazil and Russia. At least India and China are growing (the latter at a pace that is causing worries about overheating). Data for Africa are spotty but the continent’s biggest economy, South Africa, is in recession. The IMF expects global GDP to shrink by 1.4% this year, with rich countries’ economies contracting by around 3.8%.

Unsatisfied broadband users added flavor to both our Public Seminar and Mobile Broadband QoSE workshop. That included university students prevented access during the residential peak to Wi-Max subscribers experiencing 20% of the promised speed – even with perfect LoS (Line of Sight).

Such complaints are common and not limited to Sri Lanka. From Indonesia to India and from Bangladesh to Philippines we find broadband users rant not receiving the promised. We empathise with them, but this hardly an Asian or a developing world issue. The conditions elsewhere can be worse.

The weird arrangement above is an attempt by a Guest House in Johannesburg, South Africa to provide me Internet access. They still failed. It was in a way good, because I was told the quality was poor and even a simple task like accessing e-mails a nightmare sometimes.

According to CIA’s World Fact Book, South Africa is a middle-income, emerging market with an abundant supply of natural resources; well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors; a stock exchange that is 17th largest in the world; and modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centers throughout the region. Either broadband quality does not stand to its other achievements or this is an isolated issue.

LIRNEasia, with the assistance of its research partners there, intends to extend its broadband benchmarking to Africa. More stories are in pipeline, when we have test results in few months.

Helani Galpaya and Rohan Samarajiva will be teaching at the course, in addition to Alison, Tracy Cohen, and several others. It will be followed by research meetings at which Harsha de Silva, Chanuka Wattegama, Sujata Gamage and Prashanthi Weragoda will participate in addition.

Themed, ‘Connectivity and Convergence: Alternative Regulatory Strategies for Telecommunications’, the course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of senior decision-makers in telecom and related sectors in Africa and elsewhere.  After having been offered in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, this executive programme is now being offered in Africa to meet the challenges it faces in this sector. 

Target delegate profiles include decision-makers in telecommunications and related sectors in Africa including  government; regulatory agencies; operators; unions, ICT journalists, consumer groups and NGOs active in the sector

Confirmed faculty members include Rohan Samarajiva, CEO of LIRNEasia, Alison Gillwald, Associate Director, the Edge Institute and Tracy Cohen, former Councillor on the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.

Further details, including registration information, are available here.

Presented by Jon Horrocks, an independent consultant to ICASA, the presentation will cover the objectives and growth of next generation networks, from hype to reality, and the growing competition between the traditional telco model and the Internet, and in particular the issues for introducing new services.

More information can be found at the South Africa Connect Blog online at: www.southafricaconnect.org.za.

Licensing the 2100 MHz spectrum band for 3G services would enable Bangladeshi operators to launch mobile broadband services, which their customers can use to gain fast and easy access to the Internet and online services, it said on Wednesday.

Bangladesh’s mobile sector has grown rapidly, with user numbers reaching more than 45 million at end-September from 200,000 in 2001, while the country has only 1.32 million fixed-line phones.

“Laying new fixed-line connections is expensive and inefficient, so high-speed mobile networks are Bangladesh’s best bet to realise the many social and economic benefits that arise from widespread access to broadband services,” said Ricardo Tavares, senior vice president for public policy at the GSMA.

Analysts predict the number of subscribers could top 70 million by 2011, nearly half the country’s population of more than 140 million people.

Many developing countries, including Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and South Africa, have already deployed mobile broadband services enabling their people to get easy access to information on health, education, job opportunities and agriculture.

There are six cellphone carriers in Bangladesh, including five foreign operators.

Read the full story in Reuters here.

According to the Financial Times, Bharti has indicated it would be willing to pay about $19 billion for 51% of the company. That would make it the heftiest overseas acquisition ever made by an Indian firm, more than Tata Steel paid for Corus, a British steelmaker, and seven times the amount India invested in the whole of Africa over the ten years to 2004.

The deal would unite the leading companies in the world’s two most promising mobile markets. In neither market have penetration rates yet exceeded a third of the population. India is adding more subscribers per month than any other country. In Africa, subscriptions are projected to grow by 11% a year until 2011, according to Gartner, a research firm.

Red the full story in ‘The Economist’

“We have been warning for several years that commercial WiFi hotspots, especially in hotels and conference centres, are in danger of pricing themselves out of the market,” says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck, who led the research. “And, now that a monthly subscription to a basic 3G service is cheaper than a few hours on most commercial hotspots, the chickens have come home to roost.” Raed more.

The $650 million project covers more than 15,000 kilometres to link South Africa to India and France through Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya and Tanzania. It is expected to provide first broadband access to countries in East Africa, which are currently using satellite connections.  

In a similar project, NEPAD e-Africa Commission signed a deal with an American firm 5-P Holdings in November 2007 for the construction of an undersea submarine cable to link every country in Africa with the outside world.  

This is a joint project between African investors and US telecommunications development company Herakles Telecom. The cable will be ready to serve southern and eastern
Africa from 2009 onwards. Read more.

Click here to see Alcatel-Lucent’s animations of laying and repairing of submarine cable.

Title: Diversifying Participation in Network Development: Case studies and research from WDR Research Cycle 3
Editors: Amy Mahan and William H. Melody
Document date: September 2007
Pages: 230

The book is divided into three sections. The first, entitled Affordability and Use, opens with a study on affordability – definitions, analysis and issues. This is followed by two demand side studies, the first focusing on mobile use by the poor; and the second assessing communication expenditures across four developing countries. The final chapter in this section reports on a survey of ICT use by SMEs in eight African countries.

Section 2, Models to Extend Participation in Network Development considers microfinance, smart subsidies, community owned microtelcos and the extension of research networks. The countries used to highlight these alternative approaches include Bangladesh, Nepal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ghana.

Section 3, Regulatory and Information Practices, begins with two chapters dedicated to the information provision and communication practices of regulators – which are important for cultivating informed participation in regulatory processes. Next regional regulation in support of national regulators and to ensure competitive markets is examined using the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States as a case study. Further perspective on this is provided by a chapter on multinational operators in African mobile markets. The section concludes with a case study on the regulatory environment in Guyana.

This report is the third in a series of research cycles that WDR is undertaking to assess different approaches to regulation in a rapidly changing telecom environment. With the advent of privatisation, competition, and converging infrastructure sectors, the role of the regulator is in a transitional phase. The first World Dialogue on Regulation research cycle assessed two emerging regulatory trends and the report, The Next Step in Telecom Reform: ICT Convergence Regulation or Multisector Utility Regulation; and the second cycle, Stimulating Investment in Network Development: Roles for Regulators – are both available for download and hardcopies of the second can be ordered from WDR.

Diversifying Participation in Network Development, A.K. Mahan and W.H. Melody (eds), Uruguay, 2007. ISBN (printed version): 978-9974-8067-0-2

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction | William H. Melody
Section 1 – Affordability and Use
Chapter 2. Improving Affordability of Telecommunications: Cross-fertilisation between the developed and the developing world | Claire Milne
Chapter 3. Telecom Use on a Shoestring: Expenditure and perceptions of affordability amongst the financially constrained | Avanti Moonesinghe, Harsha de Silva, Neluka Silva & Ayoma Abeysuriya
Chapter 4. Variations in Expenditure on Communications in Developing Countries: A synthesis of the evidence from Albania, Mexico, Nepal and South Africa (2000-2003) | Sebastian Ureta
Chapter 5. ICT Usage and its Impact on Profitability of SMEs: A case of eight African countries | Steve Esselaar, Christoph Stork, Ali Ndiwalana & Mariama Deen-Swarray
Section 2 – Models to Extend Participation in Network Development
Chapter 6. An Investigation of the Replicability of a Microfinance Approach for Extending Telecom Access to Marginal Customers | Malathy Knight-John, Ayesha Zainudeen & Abu-Saeed Khan
Chapter 7. Smart Subsidies – Getting the Conditions Right: The experience of expanding rural telecoms in Nepal | Harsha de Silva & Ratna Kaji Tuladhar
Chapter 8. Microtelcos in Latin America and the Caribbean | Hernan Galperin & Bruce Girard
Chapter 9. Research and Education Network in Ghana: Promoting ICT in developing countries through research cooperation | Reza Tadayoni & Knud Erik Skouby
Section 3 – Regulatory and Information Practices
Chapter 10. Benchmarking National Telecom Regulatory Authority Websites of the Asia-Pacific Region | Chanuka Wattegama
Chapter 11. An Institutional and Practical Evaluation of URSEC – Uruguay’s Communication Regulator – and its Relationship with Citizens | Gustavo Gómez & Amy Mahan
Chapter 12. Regional Regulation of Telecom Markets in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States | Andrew Barendse
Chapter 13. Multinational Operators in African Mobile Markets | Ewan Sutherland
Chapter 14. Privatisation, Regulation and Investment: A case study of the telecom regulatory environment (TRE) and investment in Guyana | Samuel Braithwaite

Foundation Partners | About the Authors
Diversifying Participation in Network Development