The Advent of True Broadband in Uganda? No, Not yet.
5 Aug
On Thursday, 23rd July 2009, Seacom went “live”.
For Ugandans, that was a momentous occasion in more ways than one. As one of the speakers put it, it heralded the beginning of “new beginnings”. I’ve been priviledged to be involved in the excitement to an extent, and I will do my best to recap.
The Seacom Launch Event
The event was more of a media launch, a demonstration of the capabilities of the Seacom fibre optic cable. I was invited to the event by Lowe Scanad’s PR department, through Mr Collin Asiimwe.
My verdict? Honestly, I was blown away! For the first time ever, in Uganda, I was able view online video tutorials real time. We’re talking tutorials that are close to 700MB. Typically, I leave them downloading overnight(s) and watch them the next day, but this time, there was almost zero buffering of the videos. Mr Godfrey Ivudria of Business Week was seated next to me and he was watching CNN Live… well, live. Realtime.
I was also getting simultaneous download speeds of close to 180KB/s (about 1.4mbps) while watching the video tutorial. To put that in context, my normal internet connection gives me download speeds of about 10 KB/s (about 81kpbs) at night, when the rest of the users are asleep! I wasn’t able to run some more stress tests due to time constraints, but needless to say, I was very impressed. I should have planned more and brought a whole batch of files to download!
The highlight of the day though, was the live broadcast of the continental Seacom launch. It was held in Tanzania and presided over by the Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete. Picture quality was excellent and the video stream was seamless, apart from one or two brief glitches. I was witnessing broadband at its truest.
Truth be told, I was in the middle of what could only be described as maalo ( kinda like shameless-mouth-hanging-open-awe ). And it was justified. This was the first time I was seeing a live high quality video broadcast that was being streamed off the internet real time. I’m a techie to some extent, and I could appreciate the technological advancement we had just made, and my creative mind was trying to grapple the endless opportunities that this created for both content platform providers like myself and the end-users.
After that we had a cocktail/meetup session and it was back to the grinding stone for me. That was the same night our very own Design Kingdom went live. I was in office till about 4am. Got about 2 hours sleep before my alarm went off.
The Sanyu FM Breakfast Show
Bright and early the next day, 7AM, I was a guest on the Sanyu FM Breakfast Show.
I won’t bore you with the details, you can simply listen to the recording below. Sound quality is a bit poor, but you should be able to makes out a few voices mumbling.
The guests at the show were: John Mathwasa, Seacom Africa Project Manager; Micheal Niyitegeka, Head of Corporate Relations, FCIT, Makerere University and me.
Here’s the audio:
[podcast]http://www.rogueking.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/Sanyu_FM_Seacom_Show_export_3.mp3[/podcast]
Or in case you cannot listen to it online, dowload it here: http://www.rogueking.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/Sanyu_FM_Seacom_Show_export_3.mp3
The Monitor Article
That same day, a journalist from the Daily Monitor called me up to do a small interview for Monitor Business Power. A sort of followup article on the Seacom launch. The article is in today’s Daily Monitor. Alternatively, you can read the article here.
***
The Stakes
But there’s a bigger issue that I’m much more interested in, because it affects me and the demographic of clients Node Six works with.
When all the speeches have ended, when the wine and fruit cocktails are done and the tables, slideshows and pullup banners have been pushed aside, shut down, rolled up and locked away, there is one person left standing in the middle of the big empty room left wondering, “what now?”
That person is the consumer. The end-user. The demographic that ISPs and Telecoms like calling “the last mile“. You, and I.
First, let’s get one thing out of the way: Seacom does not sell internet connectivity to you, the end-user. Seacom sells that connectivity to ISPs like Infocom, UTL, MTN, Datanet, etc. Those ISPs then resell that connectivity to you.
So, it’s all good and exciting to see all these developments taking place, to see all these possibilities opening up before our eyes, but at the end of the day, what does it mean for the consumer? When do we see Seacom’s potential at our doorsteps, in our houses, in the small secretarial bureau down by the small kiosk in Wandegeya? When do we see Design Kingdom tutorials being streamed to an eager design freak in Pakwach? When do we see a budding blogger in Teso blog or Tweet realtime about a certain organisation’s pseudo-humanitarian efforts to end hunger in the region?
As I keep saying, I believe the future of the internet is in the hands of the end user, the guy with the mobile phone and the third hand computer. They are the people providing content, they are the people reading and using the content. They need to be empowered, they need to be given the tools to enable this fancy new form of instantaneous communication.
They need faster and cheaper internet connections. Not just because we’d like to think it’s a right, but because the plain and simple fact is, about 90% of us simply cannot afford the costs of our so-called current broadband. And even that which we can afford does not help us much. You spend 10 minutes opening up a webpage. You spend 1 month downloading a video file. (True story, I downloaded a robotics video lecture over the course of 1 month). It’s infuriating, it’s annoying, but it’s what we have.
The Issues
What we’re all waiting for is the news from the ISPs that they are now offering increased connection speeds, and possibly reduced prices. We know that Infocom is on board (they were practically co-sponsors at the launch). What we don’t know is when they are connecting their clients to the fibre optic connection.
The other large ISPs also need to get on board, but I do not see this happening very soon for two reasons:
a) MTN (and possibly UTL) have vested interests in an alternative submarine cable called Eassy and
b) There is a growing concern that Infocom has an unfair monopoly over the Seacom cable presence in Uganda, which may make the immediate adoption of Seacom’s cable by other ISPs a little difficult. The Independent‘s Joe Powell wrote a very interesting article that attempts to dig deeper into the inner workings of the Seacom / Infocom deal. (The Independent, Issue 071. July 31-Aug 2009)
Today’s Daily Monitor also reports an interesting twist to the national connectivity story, saying:
Ugandans may have to wait longer for the broadband revolution after Parliamentarians refused to approve Shs122 billion for the second phase of a countrywide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) backbone infrastructure project, citing corruption and inflation of costs in the first phase of the project.
Legislators on the ICT Committee of Parliament last week questioned the $126 million (about Shs252 billion) cost for the national ICT project, arguing that Rwanda is carrying out a similar project across 2,300km for only $38 million (about Shs76 billion). Full story.
I do not believe though, that the national backbone infrastructure project in the Daily Monitor story above directly impacts the immediate availability of broadband for the urban/metropolitan end-user. The biggest ISPs (like MTN) have been working on a fairly large and fairly robust urban-area fibre connectivity backbone for years which should ideally be independent of the National Backbone.
Problem is, there are issues, there are obstacles, there are setbacks, and we could go on and on about who’s not doing what right or who’ s shortchanging who, but..
The Bottom Line is this:
I’m not the type of person that goes around making lots of noise about legislation and monopolies and consumer rights. There are far more talented people to do that, I sit at my desk and create, so I leave the debating and the undercover stories to people better than me.
I prefer to ask myself a simple question; “What do I have now, and how can I use what I have to its fullest potential until something better comes along?”
Seacom is a breath of fresh air. Seacom is a representation of the something better that has come along. Seacom will allow us to leverage the internet in ways that have never been possible before in this country. Seacom will allow companies like mine ( Node Six ) to create applications and host content deployment platforms that will change the playing field for Africa.
But.
Until we are able to properly harness the true potential of Seacom vis the secondary or tertiary services that ISPs provide, we are still at square one, slaving away at our desks and cursing at another failed download.
—
Rogue FM: Minanawe ft Lady Jay Dee – Njalo
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Memoirs: Thanks for the progress Abba, we’re making some good headway.
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Offtopic:
Will the highways on the Internet become more few?
- George W. BushThe Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.
- Eric Schmidt
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Techie socks?
Things are not always straight forward in Ug but well, the possibility of better and faster connections is something to look forward to!
We can only hope for better and faster, can’t we?
Well writ dude, well written.
My question is whether you think new innovative ideas will be born as a result of fatsre speeds or whether you think that people will be able to do more and as result of learning more from the internet?
Thank you.
Regarding your question, the faster connection(S) will allow people to do more in less time, allowing people to learn, do, collaborate and share faster and easier. We will see a boom in applications/innovation and the learning sector will also be impacted, as Micheal mentions in the radio show.
What the hell are you talking about? BroadBand or not, I had/ve insane download speeds with my Warid WiMax connection.
Dude!
I stream stuff here without buffering.
I have loads of SERIOUS HQ 5D Porn, thanks to Warid.
===I thank you great God for Warid and whatever it has let me download.
BroadBand? *Chuckle.
*Re-chuckle!
Blatant brand plugging much, Erique? I know many people who’d disagree with your claims.
Where is the link to The Sanyu FM Breakfast Show audio file?
The audio in embedded in the post, but I’ve updated the post to link to the audio.
Enjoy!
Thanks Solo. You have answered pretty much all the questions I had about the Seacom cable and then some.
No problem, Baz.
I keep telling people that the internet is the future. Eventually this SeaCom thingy will cross “the last mile” to the end user and more people will truly enter the information age. What we need to pay attention to now is the cyber policy being discussed in Parliament. It will greatly determine how we use this resource. It would be sad if it was monopolised by any single entity especially government. I’ve heard rumors that UCC will have sole access to Seacom and plans to resell the bandwidth to local ISPs. This will present a huge problem when it comes to censorship and free market competition.
I think we’ll have innovative ideas as well as greater knowledge transfer between Ugandans themselves and the world.
I couldn’t agree more. The policies need to be scrutinized by the IT sector, both private and public, and the ISPs need to have more to look at than just their bottom line. I think there is a huge niche for customer oriented services.
If UCC takes control of Seacom, well, we’re screwed, but the likelihood of that happening is pretty low.
Thanks for the recap. Love the audio clip especially.
You’re welcome, Teti.
Now this is a good article but i am very disappointed because i dont trust those bloody ISPS. They will sell us those bundles and make a million people share them and we still paying an arm and a leg and yet they are profiting from them.
Solomon why dont you just bloody become and ISP and then we can buy broadband from you!!!
But well more seriously, do you reckon there will indeed be a real flow down of this good broadband to us, do you have an idea of the costs involved.
Am quite keen on this development as it is at the heart of my own business ideas.
I’m sure eventually, this broadband will trickle down to us over the next few years, especially if the EASSY and TEAMS fibre cables also get lit.
As for being an ISP, watch this space
Rock on, Solie Boy. I’m taking the MP3 home to listen. Took a while to download.
LOL. I thought you were at ISP central? Hope you enjoyed it.
Still waiting!!!
Wait’s over, gorgeous.
Great take on things…you are really on top of this
Thanks Sleek. All in a day’s work.
Call me about your ticket to attend Tusker Project Fame 3 House opening at Effendy’s on Sunday.
let government regulate not aprivate firm like infocom if ugandas must benefit
been reading about the essay cable and it looks like thats going to be the landing that causes the biggest shake up to this mess. apparently, these ISPs are all hooked up to the seacom and teams cables already however, they are still costing at satellite connectivity prices..(about 4000 per mb as opposed to 200 usd…if memory serves me right)..also, another disappointing but expected outcome is the chaps laying the cables “ate” and that means the infrastructure issues havent been sorted out completely…but hook or crook, we’ll get there!