Re: Nigeria's High-Speed Cable -- A Well-Kept Secret? (fwd)

[S Woodside <sbwoodside at yahoo.com>]

On Thursday, July 3, 2003, at 01:03  PM, ALAIN PATRICK AINA wrote:

>> IEEE Tech Alert
>> Nigeria's High-Speed Cable -- A Well-Kept Secret?
>> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/wonews/jun03/fibopt.html
>
> A new challenge for us !! We asked for fiber and got it.
> Then how do we use it ?
>
> Does someone know about  the  bussiness part of  "The submarine SAT-3
> fiber-optic cable" ?

The SAT-3/WASC cable was arranged in approx 1992 by a big meeting of 
African countries, African national telcos (which were hard to 
distinguish from the governments at that time) and foreign telcos. The 
split between African/foreign ownership was about 50/50. The whole 
thing was projected to cost about $600 million I think. They were 
designing, and laying the cable until the first landing starting 
working in the last year in South Africa. For most of the time, the 
business aspects have been academic, since there was no product until 
it landed.

Of course in 1992 they wouldn't have expected this to be for the 
internet, it was seen more as a telephone line thing, and whatever else 
might be coming along. The situation with telecomm has changed so much, 
but I don't think anyone updated the SAT-3 business model. There are 
one, maybe two cable landings in each country, and the massive costs of 
the cable were paid by various entities that are now often (like NITEL) 
considered provide poor service, not be very nimble, not be very 
internet-friendly.

So how to turn this to economic advantage? I don't know. I don't know 
how it was done in the West. Perhaps there were multiple competing 
cables, that would quickly solve the problem as competition would drive 
prices down and usage up. Perhaps that could be arranged here by 
dividing the cable into multiple virtual cables, assigning a non-profit 
organization (probably not the government) to manage the operations, 
and then have competition between the virtual operators.

Benin OPT seems to be making more productive use of SAT-3, (and S.A. of 
course) but I haven't seen much news out of other countries where I 
hear the landing is operational, like Cameroon.

simon

--
www.simonwoodside.com -- 99% Devil, 1% Angel


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