Title: What can civil society do? Example: submarine connectivity for Bangladesh
1What can civil society do? Example submarine
connectivity for Bangladesh
- Rohan Samarajiva
- Association for Progressive Communication
Seminar, 19 April 2006
2Agenda
- Example of a policy intervention by an ICT
policy-regulation research capacity building
(uncivil?) organization - Do not focus only on the obvious, like
- More connections
- Lower prices
- E.g., better access regime for submarine cable ?
stronger competition ? better all-around sector
performance - Seize opportunities leverage strengths
3SEA-ME-WE 4, Bangladeshs 1st submarine cable so
close yet so far
4Opportunity
- Cable operational in December 2005
- Bangladesh not ready
- With connecting links
- Access regime
- Opportunity ? accepted UNDP invitation to address
ITES forum - Hartal day but 250-person room full to capacity
- Minister BTTB leadership present for entire
session
5SAT-3/WASC/SAFE new connectivity for West Africa
from 2002
6SAT-3 in West Africa SMW4 in Bangladesh compared
- 28,800 km
- Initial capacity 120 Gbps
- USD 670m cost
- Commissioned May 2002
- 15 countries 17 landings
- 1st only submarine cable for W. Africa
- 20,000 km
- Initial capacity 160 Gbps (12.5 of design
capacity) - USD 500m cost
- Commissioning 13 Dec 2005 in Dubai
- 14 countries 15 landings
- 1st only submarine cable for Bdesh
7SAT-3/W Africa SMW4/Bdesh
- Closed club consortium
- Only ½ circuit sales now loosening up
- Closed club consortium, with greater flexibility
- Full circuit sales allowed
- Only consortium can sell IRUs for 2 yrs members
may sell after 2007
8W. Africa 02 Bangladesh 05
9SAT-3 cable does not necessarily mean
connectivity
2000 2001 2002 SAT-3 starts 2003
Internet traffic from Africa (Gbps) 0.649 1.230 2.102 3.226
Annual increase 90 71 53
10What about capacity use?
- IEEE author estimate 3 at end 2003
- Already beyond expectation Administrator of
cable consortium - However, he also says
- In many of these countries . . . backhaul
network is quite not accessible or may not be
fully in place or may not have the capacity to
support international access
11Case study Nigeria (Dec 2003)
- Main cable station completed in December 2001
- Started handling traffic in April 2003 (15 months
later) - 13 STM-1s (155 Mbps) available (3 in reserve)
- 78 of one STM-1 frame in use (connected to sole
domestic fiber) by Shell Nigeria
12Case study Nigeria
- Socketworks (ITES firm)
- No fiber no SAT-3
- Uses satellite connection (64 kbps up/256 kbps
down) to California server farm - USD 13,000 to install, including dish, modem, and
router - Operational costs USD 1,000/mo.
- "The worst thing that happened to SAT-3/WASC was
that the Nigerian people were represented by the
most incompetent and most dysfunctional company
in the world, NITEL Dr Aloy Chife, CEO,
Socketworks
13And price?
- In monopoly environments only ½ circuits are sold
- Connectivity½ circuit from, say, Europe ½
circuit from African country - Actual price can be many times the cost of
international ½ circuit - In June 2005, E1 ½ circuit from Europe was USD
6,000-8,500/mo. - ½ circuit from Telkom SA was USD
15,000-17,500/mo. - Total USD 21,000-26,000/mo. (70 to S African
monopolist)
14Price, Africa compared to India (ITES leader
regional benchmark)
India, E1 full circuit/mo. (USD), 2004 Q4 Africa, E1 full circuit/mo. (USD)
London-Mumbai 9,638 21,000-26,000
HK-Mumbai 7,611
Mumbai-Singapore 8,065
LA-Mumbai 9,003
Mumbai-NYC 8,614
15But India is not standing still . . .
- In 2004, India was in ½ circuit regime
- VSNL took 85 of revenue from Indian ½ circuits
- But will move to full circuit regime with new
capacity coming on stream - Tata Indicom 5.12 Tbit cable between India
Singapore in November 2004 - SMW4 and FLAG Falcon in December 2005
- TRAI has ordered cuts of 29 for E-1s, 64 for
DS-3s, and 59 for STM-1s relative to IN-US
Atlantic route effective September 2005
16New regulated prices in India
Ceiling price/month for IPLC half circuits (USD), IN-US Atlantic Route likely full circuit price, assuming identical ½ circuit prices
E-1 2,366 4,732
DS-3 18,928 37,856
STM-1 54,418 108,826
17Recommendations to Government of Bangladesh
- Hive off the SMW4 consortium share interface
(including fiber to Coxs Bazaar) from BTTB now
make it a stand-alone company - Design a management contract with strict
performance incentives and bid it out
transparently - Contractually mandate management to web-publish
all capacity contracts - Dont wait for three years and waste
opportunities do it now
18Recommendations
- Declare the cable associated facilities
essential - BTRC to be directed to implement open-access
regime - Leave satellites alone, like India
- Encourage the landing of an additional cable
(possibly connecting India/Singapore) to provide
facilities based competition in future - Cable redundancy needed in addition to satellite
- Also analysts expect downward pressure on IPLC
prices in Pakistan and Sri Lanka where SMW4 will
be 2nd cable (excluding obsolete SMW2)
19Follow up
- Based on responses
- Confidential memo to Minister at his request
- Op-ed piece in Daily Star within 3-4 days
- Seized the opportunity using comparative
advantages - Research media savvy
- Now up to domestic actors to move process forward
- Actors not fully lined up because opportunity
arose suddenly
20Rohan Samarajiva
- www.lirneasia.net
- samarajiva_at_lirne.net
- 94 11 493 9992 (v)
- 94 11 494 0290 (f)