There's an object lesson in news about a possible Google-led undersea cable to South Africa, and it's a lesson our telecoms policy makers - especially those who can take over from Poison Ivy next year without feeling guilty about her legacy - would do well to think about.
One often hears government types complain that leaving important services to the private sector merely enriches big corporations and serves only the wealthy. They feel the state should lead and direct economic growth, in order to help those who can't (or don't) help themselves.
The intentions may be noble, but the logic is flawed.
It was with this view that the government gave the partially privatised Telkom a monopoly. The aim was to tie it to a mandate to provide lines in under-serviced areas.
This didn't work, of course. As we all know, the private monopoly turned out to be even worse than a public utility. It not only failed to deliver on its mandate (which a public utility would probably also have done), but it charged among the world's highest prices for sub-standard telecommunications services, shrank the fixed-line market, and made rapacious profits for a few shareholders, which included government itself and government-selected favourites who were more equal than others.
By contrast, the government left the cellular phone market to the private sector, reasoning that they were only toys for the wealthy and only a million-odd people would want them. Greedy private companies could, once they'd paid their dues to their government benefactors, be left free to exploit the rich.
This didn't work either. As we all know, despite the collusion implicit in a government-licensed cartel, there are now more SIM cards than people in South Africa, data rates are among the most competitive worldwide, and 80% of all households, rich and poor, have access to at least one cellphone.
Those who rise to the exalted heights of cabinet appear to believe wise words belong on cheesy posters on office walls, to instruct their minions. They don't heed, for example, the warning of the Reverend Dale Turner: "It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character."
Such infirmity, so well embodied in the person of The Bolt, is where Infraco came from. It is a new government project designed to repeat, with variations, the errors made with Telkom.
Mistaking the abuses and failures of a government-protected monopolist for the ordinary practice of free market competitors, government decided to solve the problem of expensive international capacity by building a cable - only one - in the hope that it will be able to fix prices in the interest of the people. Even assuming it can stop fighting over whose pet project gets permission to go ahead, it turns out nobody actually wants any of this. Least of all the hand-picked telcos that are expected to invest billions without any guarantee that they can benefit from their investment.
Suddenly, from left field, Google appears. It has looked at a world map of Google searches, and found that Africa was missing. Gone. Barring a faint flicker around a handful of big cities, it is as dark as the Atlantic and Indian oceans that flank it.
So, Google wants something to be done about this. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, of course. So one option, ITWeb reports, is that Google is seriously considering building an undersea cable of its own.
If the government had a stake in Microsoft, it probably would have banned gmail too.
Ivo Vegter, freelance journalist and columnist
Why? Not because it is in the telecoms business, and wants to make money from such services the way a traditional operator would do. Not because it can afford to spend a few hundred million dollars on a touchy-feely charity project, or believes passionately in providing essential services to the poor (though expect plenty waffle about this in the marketing).
No. People who don't use Google products are people from whom it cannot profit. People who don't have Internet access can't use Google products. So build a cable and give people free access, if necessary. Do whatever it takes to get the 750 million people of Africa online and Googling.
Had government thought of Google? Had government considered that some private sector companies might actually build infrastructure and give us bandwidth for free? That thousands of profit-driven companies in a free market constantly seek problems they can solve better than anyone else?
Did it consider that those they licence to make monopoly profits might be undercut and destroyed by disruptive interlopers with innovative business models like Google?
Maybe government did consider that possibility. Maybe that's the reason why it insists on licensing telecoms services: so companies that toe the official line and dutifully enrich government cronies can profit at the expense of the people, without facing the threat that in a free market we might be able to get the same or better service elsewhere, for free.
Remember VOIP? It was illegal, why exactly? For the benefit of people who were now paying through their noses for telephone services from government's pet companies? For the benefit of the people who couldn't afford Telkom's expensive landlines? For the benefit of South Africa's citizens?
Of course not. It was illegal because the government could not conceive of a world in which it didn't run everything, and didn't take a cut of every deal. It does not trust a profit-driven world in which business models chop and change and compete for the commercial conquest of consumers' custom. If the government had a stake in Microsoft, it probably would have banned gmail too.
So, let's say Google does offer to do the job that South Africa could profitably have done for the continent a decade ago: to build a "gcable" to connect Africa. Let's assume it does this for its purely selfish, profit-driven motives, but like with searching and gmail, makes it cheap or even free for Africa's 750 million people to get online.
What's the bet that your government, our government, the government of the people for the people, will refuse it landing rights?
* Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist and columnist, who blogs at http://ivo.co.za/.
Share