Rival interests threaten Africa’s undersea cables
Just barely a week after it emerged that an American firm, Herakles, is to build another East African communication cable, South African Communications Minister, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, has caused the project to be stopped.
This follows announcement that no undersea cable will be allowed to land in the country and provide cheaper broadband unless local or African investors have majority shareholding.
The unexpected development has prompted Herakles to pull out of building its proposed East African cable. Analysts are looking at the development as another missed opportunity for Africa to have access to cheap internet bandwidth and a reliable transmission system.
The South African move is designed to get EASSy (East African Submarine System) to fall into line with the NEPAD Protocol, of which the South African Government has been the strongest supporter.
However, the move is being seen by many as an attempt by a few firms and countries to foist their desires on other in the continent.
Before the minister’s announcement, some South African groups had already led moves behind the scenes to get the region’s incumbents to withdraw from the EASSy project.
Currently, three South African firms, Telkom, Neotel and MTN jointly own 27 per cent of the 10000km EASSy cable. But that will only be sufficient to let it dock in South Africa and give the three operators the bandwidth they are paying for if the minister decides that African investors - rather than purely South African - are sufficient.
Already; many industry analysts have condemned what they believe to be attempts by few African countries and big operator to keep prices of telecommunication high.
According to a telecoms expert, Mr. Ben Aduli, the decision sends wrong signals to the investment community and to subscribers. He said it partly showed that the South African market was not yet fully liberalised.
When completed, the project would have operated a 13,000 submarine fibre optic cable along the east coast of Africa and through the Red Sea.
Coura Fall, Information Communication Technology Policy Advocacy Officer, APC, said, “Herakles Telecom is to build the SEACOM marine cable along the East Coast of Africa whose work is to be completed by the year 2009 at a cost of $300m.”
At a presentation at the ongoing Highway Africa Conference in South Africa, Herakles said the cable would compete with two other cables currently under construction- the Kenyan government-sponsored The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) EASSy.
It was to connect major urban centres of Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa and the United Arab Emirates before it terminates in Italy. Uganda being a landlocked country in the region could benefit from the project if it connects her national fibre optic cable through any of the countries.
She said that the East African Submarine Cable and the SAT-3 projects had delayed due to a number of challenges.
She said, “The challenge for the EASSy and SAT3 are rather different, on the EASSy there are processes in place where issues are discussed but these are not completely transparent.”
Fall, who made a presentation on “Access to ICT’s in Africa,” said there was inadequate debate on these projects and as such had limited their delivery to the people.
She said, “On the SAT3, the decision making process is completely in closed doors, therefore the advocacy coalition needs to find ways that will make them need to react publicly and to force a discussion within the consortium that brings out the differences.
“Governments need to provide regulators and policy makers with means to address the issues, to create public debates and to challenge the lack of transparency and the current pricing and to negotiate for lower prices.”
She said the future of the projects was shaky following the disagreements over prices to be charged from the users of the cable.
“The war between the civil society organisation and regulators for both projects is on the prices for accessing the cable’s lack of transparency in the processes that are ongoing,” she said.
Only last week, following repeated complaints, the West African Telecommunications Regulators Assembly held a two-day conference to look at how its members might address the issues raised by the SAT3 monopoly.
Two leading non-profit technology bodies, African Progressive — and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, argued that the current pricing of SAT3 services were so high that they presented a snag on the development of local markets.
Abi Jagun of APC and Ben Akoh of OSIWA presented four country case studies that showed that rates were being kept artificially high and varied enormously between countries on no clear basis, geographic or otherwise.
A regulator from one country revealed that the incumbent operator of its national monopoly had refused to provide capital and operating costs, making it difficult to address price issues. Benchmarking was suggested as an alternative to a cost-based approach given these difficulties.
This follows announcement that no undersea cable will be allowed to land in the country and provide cheaper broadband unless local or African investors have majority shareholding.
The unexpected development has prompted Herakles to pull out of building its proposed East African cable. Analysts are looking at the development as another missed opportunity for Africa to have access to cheap internet bandwidth and a reliable transmission system.
The South African move is designed to get EASSy (East African Submarine System) to fall into line with the NEPAD Protocol, of which the South African Government has been the strongest supporter.
However, the move is being seen by many as an attempt by a few firms and countries to foist their desires on other in the continent.
Before the minister’s announcement, some South African groups had already led moves behind the scenes to get the region’s incumbents to withdraw from the EASSy project.
Currently, three South African firms, Telkom, Neotel and MTN jointly own 27 per cent of the 10000km EASSy cable. But that will only be sufficient to let it dock in South Africa and give the three operators the bandwidth they are paying for if the minister decides that African investors - rather than purely South African - are sufficient.
Already; many industry analysts have condemned what they believe to be attempts by few African countries and big operator to keep prices of telecommunication high.
According to a telecoms expert, Mr. Ben Aduli, the decision sends wrong signals to the investment community and to subscribers. He said it partly showed that the South African market was not yet fully liberalised.
When completed, the project would have operated a 13,000 submarine fibre optic cable along the east coast of Africa and through the Red Sea.
Coura Fall, Information Communication Technology Policy Advocacy Officer, APC, said, “Herakles Telecom is to build the SEACOM marine cable along the East Coast of Africa whose work is to be completed by the year 2009 at a cost of $300m.”
At a presentation at the ongoing Highway Africa Conference in South Africa, Herakles said the cable would compete with two other cables currently under construction- the Kenyan government-sponsored The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) EASSy.
It was to connect major urban centres of Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa and the United Arab Emirates before it terminates in Italy. Uganda being a landlocked country in the region could benefit from the project if it connects her national fibre optic cable through any of the countries.
She said that the East African Submarine Cable and the SAT-3 projects had delayed due to a number of challenges.
She said, “The challenge for the EASSy and SAT3 are rather different, on the EASSy there are processes in place where issues are discussed but these are not completely transparent.”
Fall, who made a presentation on “Access to ICT’s in Africa,” said there was inadequate debate on these projects and as such had limited their delivery to the people.
She said, “On the SAT3, the decision making process is completely in closed doors, therefore the advocacy coalition needs to find ways that will make them need to react publicly and to force a discussion within the consortium that brings out the differences.
“Governments need to provide regulators and policy makers with means to address the issues, to create public debates and to challenge the lack of transparency and the current pricing and to negotiate for lower prices.”
She said the future of the projects was shaky following the disagreements over prices to be charged from the users of the cable.
“The war between the civil society organisation and regulators for both projects is on the prices for accessing the cable’s lack of transparency in the processes that are ongoing,” she said.
Only last week, following repeated complaints, the West African Telecommunications Regulators Assembly held a two-day conference to look at how its members might address the issues raised by the SAT3 monopoly.
Two leading non-profit technology bodies, African Progressive — and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, argued that the current pricing of SAT3 services were so high that they presented a snag on the development of local markets.
Abi Jagun of APC and Ben Akoh of OSIWA presented four country case studies that showed that rates were being kept artificially high and varied enormously between countries on no clear basis, geographic or otherwise.
A regulator from one country revealed that the incumbent operator of its national monopoly had refused to provide capital and operating costs, making it difficult to address price issues. Benchmarking was suggested as an alternative to a cost-based approach given these difficulties.
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