Internet Solutions trials ‘costly’ FTTH; commercial deployment unlikely

According to MyBroadband.co.za, South African broadband provider Internet Solutions (IS) is currently trialling a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network solution, but has indicated that the costs involved are likely to prove prohibitive for a commercial offering. Speaking at regulator ICASA’s ongoing local loop unbundling (LLU) hearings, IS said that the cost of delivering individual FTTH connections to customers is so high that it will take ‘a very long time’ to recover the initial investment. IS said that the costly portion is not the fibre itself, but rather the trenching and legislation associated with implementing a FTTH rollout.

TeleGeography notes that the FTTH trial is not the first broadband initiative that IS has undertaken in recent months. In September IS confirmed that it was at an advanced stage of planning for a project that could see it build out a series of metropolitan Wi-Fi networks to serve business campuses and city streets in densely populated urban areas. IS plans to leverage the ZAR5 billion (USD612.2 million), 12,000km national fibre-optic network being built simultaneously by FibreCo, the broadband initiative that it has a 33.3% stake in; other joint partners include local mobile operator Cell C and Convergence Partners, the investment firm helmed by Dimension Data chairman Andile Ngcaba.

Source: Telegeography

Glo Mobile will be go mobile by year-end; plans ‘aggressive’ launch

Ghanaian news portal Myjoyonline writes that start-up Go Mobile Ghana revealed plans to launch its ‘023’ mobile services in the country before the end of the year, and that it plans to attack the market aggressively. Glo Mobile’s head of operations, Mohammed Jameel, reportedly told journalists: ‘we know Ghanaians have been waiting for us, we have crossed a number of milestones and we are ready to launch before the close of 2011.’ The official went on to say that his firm intended to ‘be aggressive … unique … competitive in pricing’ and that the newcomer intends to launch a range of ‘superior’ products in all key cities across the country at launch. The company’s arrival is somewhat overdue, but Glo attributes this to a desire to ensure it has installed enough equipment to start with near 100% coverage.

TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database writes that Glo Mobile missed its August 2011 deadline to have achieved 50% population coverage (as per the terms of its licence) and that it also missed the government’s revised 15 September deadline. Glo Mobile is now tight-lipped about its plans but has indicated a 3 November launch date for its mobile service.

Source: Telegeography

Nigerian President Jonathan arrives in Accra for a two-day visit

Accra, Oct.7, GNA – Nigerian President Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, on late Friday afternoon arrived in Accra for a two-day State visit to Ghana. President Jonathan was met on arrival by host President John Evans Atta Mills at the Jubilee Lounge of the Kotoka International Airport, amidst military honours and fanfare of drumming and dancing by a group of Nigerian residents in Ghana.

Detailed programme drawn for the visit include a State dinner at the Banquet Hall, laying of wreath on the tomb of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s First President at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum in Accra on Saturday. President Jonathan would hold bilateral discussions with his host on enhancing relations between Accra and Abuja in the contest of West African integration.

He would receive an award at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and meet with the Nigerian Community in Ghana. The visit is President Jonathan’s last leg of a three-nation tour of Rwanda, Ethiopia and Ghana. He returns home on Saturday, October 8. 7 Oct. 11

Minister hints at spectrum grab to reallocate dormant frequencies

Ghana News Agency cites the Minister of Communications Haruna Iddrisu as saying the government will continue its efforts to best utilise precious radio frequency spectrum in the country, and to manage and optimise it correctly to ‘ensure sanity’. To that end the ministry has given the National Communications Authority (NCA) a policy directive to revoke any assigned frequencies that have lain dormant for the last three years and reallocate them. Mr Iddrisu said the decision to withdraw unused spectrum would allow the state to reassign them to other operators which could offer services in underserved parts of Ghana. The minister admitted this was not good news for those firms not using their spectrum, but said the government needed to adopt a tough stance for the benefit of all.

Source: Telegeography

Subscribers given extra time to register SIMs

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has extended the deadline for the country’s mobile subscribers to register their details, The Nation reports, citing a statement signed by Reuben Muoka, the regulator’s head of media and publicity. Muoka said that the NCC has begun the harmonisation of Nigeria’s registered SIM cards, which involves the collation, reconciliation, cleaning and consolidation of the captured data into a central data infrastructure. ‘Given the vast geographical spread of the country, and the logistics involved in the registration exercise over the past six months, there is need for proper harmonisation of the data in line with the specifications issued by the commission,’ he said. The six-month SIM registration exercise was scheduled to conclude on 28 September 2011, but the deadline has now been extended for an unspecified period during the harmonisation process to allow any remaining subscribers to register their details. ‘This limited period provides the last chance for all users of existing SIM cards to register, as all unregistered SIM cards will be disconnected without further notice at the conclusion of the harmonisation period,’ the NCC said.

Source: Telegeography.

Essar reaches temporary settlement with KDN

Essar Telekom Kenya has agreed to pay Kenyan Data Networks (KDN) a lump sum of KES25 million (USD250,000), followed by KES6.2 million until an independent arbitrator can settle the dispute. The disagreement is over KES133 million in unpaid fees to KDN for backhaul transmission services from the Indian-backed telco. KDN began litigation against Essar in May this year, threatening to cut off Essar’s connectivity should it continue its non-payment. In this most recent deal, Essar, which operates locally as Yu, has consented to clear the KES25 million debt incurred for services between May and August this year, and continue to pay KES6.2 million a month whilst an independent arbitrator investigates the case, provided that the Nairobi-based wholesaler does not interfere with its connectivity.

As previously reported by CommsUpdate, KDN claims to be operating at a loss as a result of Essar’s non-payment.

World Bank: Ghanaian telecoms investment reached USD1.1 trillion in 1998-2008

A new report published by the World Bank says that investments in telecoms infrastructure in Ghana topped USD1.13 trillion in the ten-year period from 1998 to 2008. In its report, titled ‘Africa’s ICT Infrastructure: Building on the Mobile Revolution’, the fund notes that the sums spent by both government-owned and privately-run ventures was equivalent to 1.1% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Further, the report places Ghana ninth in the top ten list of countries in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of telecoms investment in the period, ahead of Angola (USD1 trillion). The other countries in the World Bank list being South Africa (USD18.1 trillion), Nigeria (USD12.7 trillion), Kenya (USD2.9 trillion), Sudan (USD1.8 trillion), Uganda (USD1.6 trillion), Senegal (USD1.5 trillion), Tanzania (USD1.4 trillion) and DR Congo (USD1.2 trillion).

Source: Telegeography

Sonatel official says controversial tax will cut revenues by 10%

Bloomberg reports a senior official of Senegalese national PTO Sonatel as saying the government’s controversial tax on international incoming calls will likely result in a 10% fall in revenues for the company. Mamadou Aidara Diop, a member of the company’s board and secretary-general of the Labour Union of Sonatel Workers, went on to say that it would also lead to many more Senegalese living overseas to use VoIP-based alternatives to circumvent paying for the higher rates Sonatel will have to charge. ‘People will find alternative methods to call,’ the official said. The proposed tax adds XOF49.2 (USD0.10) per minute on calls to mobiles made from outside the country – up 53% on the previous rate – while calls to fixed numbers impose an extra XOF75.45 on users. Given that international calls account for more than two-thirds of the incumbent’s annual turnover, Diop is concerned about the ramifications for the telco. When President Wade implemented a similar tax last year, Diop said calls from abroad dropped by 15%. Sonatel has apparently taken the matter to the courts, claiming the tax to be outside ‘legal norms or international law’, and the telco’s union is also contemplating a strike later this month, he said.

Source: Telegeography

Ghana’s MNP gathers momentum

Ghana’s telecoms watchdog the National Communication Authority (NCA) has announced that by the end of August 64,700 customers had switched operators via mobile number portability (MNP) since its launch two months earlier. 43,600 numbers were ported in August alone, representing around 0.2% of the total wireless market. The regulator gives no details regarding which operators are receiving the most ports, or losing the most customers, but does note that 515 customers ported back to their original provider after the minimum waiting period, whilst 67 elected to immediately switch to a third operator.

Ghana’s wireless market is somewhat crowded, with five operators vying for position and a sixth in the pipeline. MNP is expected to improve conditions for competition, allowing smaller, younger telcos such as Expresso to compete with the well-established, entrenched providers like MTN Ghana.

Source: Telegeography

Tax On International Inbound Calls – Too Good to Miss… As More African Countries Are Tempted to Go This Way

London — The list of African countries that have implemented, are planning to implement or have failed to implement a tax on international inbound calls is getting longer by the day.

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The non-exhaustive list of “shame” includes countries like Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mauritania, Madagascar, Ghana, Senegal and Liberia. Balancing Act has been following the story since the failed attempt of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire back in August 2009. Isabelle Gross looks at the latest twists in the Senegalese case and the attempt of the Liberia Telecommunications Authority to introduce a similar tax in one of the poorest countries in Africa.

Following a presidential decree dated 19th November 2010, Senegal suspended an earlier decree dated May 2010 that introduced a tax on international inbound calls with the result that the minimum tariff for an inbound call increased to US$0.37 per minute compared to the previous rate of US$0.20. At the time, the overall annual revenue generated by the tax was estimated at US$135 million per year (60 billion CFA francs).

Less than six months after the suspension decree, Senegal’s telecoms operators have again to face the reintroduction of the tax on international inbound calls. However this time, the Senegalese Government seems to have learnt some lessons from the failed first attempt as it has been trying to win the support of various interest groups including the Senegalese diaspora.

The Government of Senegal has announced that it will use the proceeds of the tax in the following order: US$34 million (15 billion CFA francs) to help the Senegalese diaspora resettling in the country; US$56 million (25 billion CFA francs) for rural electrification; US$22 million (10 billion CFA francs) to support Senegalese buying power and to improve the health, sport and culture sectors. This amounts to a total of US$113 million (50 billion CFA francs). It remains to be seen what the remaining US$13 million (10 billion CFA francs) will be used for.

Despite all the efforts that the Senegalese Government is putting in to get the tax on inbound international calls reinstated, it is still not going down very well. In order to convince the Senegalese diaspora, a delegation of Senegalese, including Mr Momar Ndao, the head of the Consumers Association of Senegal, went to Paris to meet them. On May 31st they held a meeting at the French Consulate to seek the acceptance of the diaspora in return for the creation of resettlement fund. The meeting didn’t go very well as shown in the following video clip published a couple of days later on Daily Motion.

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Since then, the case has escalated further in Senegal: a special presidential meeting on the topic of international inbound calls has turned sour and the Union of Telecommunications workers has called a strike. The Senegalese newspaper, the “As” reported that Cheikh Tidiane Mbaye, the head of Sonatel (the national incumbent) said during the meeting that he felt embarrassed because this was not a meeting about a tax on international inbound calls but rather a meeting against Sonatel.

He further added that “Mr President, you said earlier that we like money. I would like to add that I don’t like money but I like development. This is different. You, you like money”. Following this meeting, the head of the Union, Mamadou Aïdara Diop said that they will call for a national strike against the tax on international inbound calls.

Interestingly, the latest news on how the tax on inbound calls will be allocated has changed too: there is no longer any reference to a fund for the diaspora and the US$135 million will be devoted to US$45 (20 billion CFA francs) for the electricity sector, US$18 million (8 billion CFA francs) for ICT projects (e-cases), US$11 million (5 billion CFA francs) for digital projects (purchase of computers) and US$11 million (5 billions CFA francs) to improve water supply. The local Senegalese press has also reported that Global Voice Group might sue the Government of Senegal for breach of contract.

As pressure is mounting in Senegal for the withdrawal on the tax on international inbound calls, it is not yet clear how it will end in but we dearly hope that common sense will prevail. As more and more African countries think about introducing a tax on international inbound calls, the leader in implementing such services, Global voice Group (GVG), is no longer the only game in town. Any telecoms tech will tell you that it is not rocket science to put in place a monitoring system to control inbound international calls. Companies that offer the same services as GVG have understood that the appeal of this game is the easy money that it generates.

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Following on from Senegal, Ghana or Guinea, Liberia has decided to go the same way. A couple of weeks ago, the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) issued a draft regulation on international traffic. The 4-page document must have been written in a hurry because it remains unclear from the document what type of traffic will be monitored and taxed.

The LTA in its draft regulations refers sometimes to “international inbound and outbound call data and rates for call termination” or “to all calls routed to +231 country code irrespective of the routing method” or “the implementation of a traffic data monitoring and retention solution for both domestic traffic and international inbound traffic” or “the international gateway monitoring facilities … …. shall be used for the monitoring of all traffic”.

The least, this regulation is very confusing apart from the fact that LTA prescribes that “all international inbound calls terminating to subscriber number with country code +231 incur a minimum regulatory fee of US$0.15 per minute (on top of the US$0.12 per minute wholesale price) and shall be collected by the terminating service provider on behalf of LTA”.

While telecoms operators in Liberia are turned into tax collectors, it might be worth reminding the LTA that such a “regulatory fee” contravenes:

• the ITU’s International Telecommunications Regulations (also know as the “Melbourne Agreement”), Article 6.1.3 states that fiscal taxes shall normally be collected only on international services billed to customers in that country; while there are proposals to reform the ITRs, it is specially recognised that reform of 6.1.3 shall avoid permitting double taxation.
• the World Trade Organisation’s Annex on Telecommunication Services (1988) which states that taxes should not be higher than local interconnection rates.
• Recommendation D.140 of ITU (2002) requests that tariffs including termination rates should be cost-orientated.

•  telecoms operators in West African made it clear in the “Declaration of Dakar” issued in November 2010 that they remain against such taxation systems. Besides the legal infringements, Liberia will also need to think about the economic consequences: it will impact negatively on the international competitiveness of the country and drive up the cost of doing business at a time of global economic downturn; the increases in the cost of termination of incoming international traffic will have a negative impact on Liberian businesses wishing to develop exports; for Liberian families with members living outside Liberia, the increased cost of calls to their home country will translate into fewer, shorter calls and less money available for remittance to Liberia.

Recently I had an email exchange with a Liberian person living in the US and his answer on the question of taxing international inbound calls was ” the LTA’s regulatory fee issue is in my opinion, not progressive”. Progressive is the key point. It is all about developing a regulatory framework that is an enabler rather than issuing regulations that take telecoms operators and consumers for a “cash cow”.http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fallafrica.com%2Fstories%2F201108280028.html&layout=standard&show_faces=false&width=500&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&height=35

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