On Tuesday 01 February 2005 20:08, Badru Ntege wrote: > Once this confusion was cleared as Paul stated earlier we all submitted our > responses. The one2net response is available for all if you mail me or I > can plan and have it posted for download on our website.
Please mail me a copy, Badru. > > All ISP's then also submitted their individual submissions both to me and > to ucc we then had a final statement from the ISP's which was submitted to > UCC. Are these also publicly available? > I read the story and the comments. If you read the UCC policy document > which by the way I recommend anybody serious about the industry to take > time and read, we have a long way to go as a country to achieve anything > near universal access. All the RCDF objectives and moneys will not even > help us achieve 20% of what the population wants/needs. So how do we try > and achieve this connectivity. The plan is to make infrastructure > provision a business separated from service provision. Once that is > achieved you then look at the current providers and ask whether in a > controlled market environment they can achieve our national objectives. > Not forgetting that our national objectives have to first fit into their > business and strategic objectives. So while the TNO is being licensed, is this the ring sounding at the back of the UCC's ears, or is it a nice-to-have? > > Now to make value for the infrastructure a market has to be created thus > the vision of two types of license. Infrastructure and service. The > service provider would then offer service to it's clients over the > infrastructure provided by the national operator (infrastructure provider). Typical, cost-effective, and fair. > I hope this shines a bit of light on the reasoning. As much as we all want > deregulation... I don't think what we are looking for is complete deregulation, but a step in that direction vis a vis world trends, and availability of alternative methods, in a controlled fashion, of course. I doubt there's any country that has got complete communications deregulation. > our market is not yet mature enough to fully open. At the end > it will be the consumers and ultimately the country who surfers and then > the same voices will be saying UCC allowed all these cowboys to come in > build a patchwork network rip us all off and then leave taking their money > away. I don't quite agree, Badru, not necessarily. Opening up voice to say you can carry voice applications on whatever protocol/medium you choose, doesn't mean the UCC should license any Joe Blogg. Working with the UCC, ISP's and other experienced service providers should provide minimum criteria to the kind of providers the UCC should grant "alternative_methods" to. There are some markets that have allowed anyone to provide voice services, and I don't fully support this model. As you say, doing it this way would, in the end, hurt the consumers and the investors, because while we need pervasive, cheap voice services, we still need to all turn a profit, or else what's the point? > > Then when you look at other fully developed markets, there is still a level > of regulation in terms of number of players. Exactly! The UCC would open up the voice market, but limit it to: a) Number of players allowed to (directly) provide said service along side the incumbents. b) Be specific as to which provider is going to provide said service. It is protectionist, but it covers the initial bases, as a start. > I honesty cannot do this topic justice over the list so I believe we need > an open forum where we can start looking and planning a post regulation > industry what is in for the consumer and small business ?. One option to the smaller business that the UCC may not directly license, is to work together with the licensed voice providers and create value-added services to end users and the providers. At the end of the day, you want a controlled, well-behaved and slightly predictable industry, but with as much co-operation as is possible. Mark. _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug %LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
