This is that time of year, when we look back over the past months and try work out what progress we've made. Some of us are celebrating a year of success; some of us are giving ourselves a pat on the back just because we managed to keep the doors open and lights on. A lot happened in 2010 in the telecoms space, and a lot more will happen next year.
I have a few 'New Year's wishes' that I'd like to share - and hopefully drum up some support to turn 2011 into the year that slingshots SA's telecoms industry back into a strong regional leadership position.
First: fibre in the ground, and doing more with it
2010 was the year of trenches on the side of the road, the year of teams of workers unspooling giant drums of fibre, the year of pavement molestation of truly epic proportions. 2011 should see even more.
Eat all you can is never a business model that is sustainable.
Roger Hislop, contributor, ITWeb
Unfortunately for the vast majority of consumers and any business located outside of large business parks or CBD areas, this fibre will pass under their noses, without them getting a sniff. Essentially all the last mile fibre being put in the ground this year - and next year - is for enterprise, connecting business parks and commercial districts to telco backbones. More often than not, this new fibre snakes its way right through residential and light commercial areas, but never stops there.
My New Year's wish? That operators and fibre infrastructure companies add connection points on their suburb-bisecting trunks, and under an open access policy, create a massive opportunity for mid-size ISPs and telecoms providers to create a viable business servicing consumers and small businesses in their neighbourhoods.
This needs a clear policy decision from the Ministries of Communications and Trade and Industry about provisioning of access nodes on fibre backbones for smaller telecoms providers, and a forward-thinking approach by the telcos when doing big infrastructure rollouts.
Everyone wins - smaller telcos can work out how to distribute bandwidth in under-serviced locations, especially townships, which are transected by fibre trunks that they cannot access - just like under apartheid when they were transected by highways with no local offramps.
Consumers and small/medium businesses can get the bandwidth they require, from service providers geared to their needs.
Even the large telcos win, because their current market of large enterprises is suddenly multiplied by mid-size network providers that will carry the financial and technical burden of this last mile distribution network.
Second: government finally implements LLU
It's been on the cards for a long time. It's been off the cards, on the cards, back off, partly on, partly off... has anyone even seen the cards recently?
The confusion, uncertainty, mind-changing and general complete lack of a clear plan is doing nobody any good.
There is no debate - local loop unbundling is the single most effective way to kick-start competition and service delivery in telecoms.
My wish for 2011? That ICASA and the DOC will get on with it. Priority number one! Let's move, people!
Third: forget about uncapped as some kind of right
Really, “eat all you can” is never a business model that is sustainable. Somewhere, someone is paying the bandwidth piper. The only question is why, and for how long. Everyone of any weight understands this - locally and abroad. Once the 'uncapped' providers with the deeper pockets have won this round of customer acquisition, it'll be back to business as usual. Would Sir like the three, five or seven gig package?
My New Year's wish? That consumers and ISPs stop convincing each other, and themselves, that giving mega-downloaders a free ride is a good thing, and that those klapping 10 or 20 gig a month are using it for anything other than pirating movies and TV shows.
Fourth: more radio spectrum be allocated to small network operators
The broadband and corporate markets could be cracked wide open by giving more small telecoms companies licences to spectrum in the 20GHz band, far away from WiMax and LTE and other large operator interests.
Right now there are very few operators who can put up point-to-point and point-to-multipoint microwave links - but there are loads who wish they could. Successful businesses doing point-to-point WiFi, getting increasingly frustrated because they're stuck doing Noddy solutions using the unsuited (but unregulated) 802.11n tech.
My New Year's wish? That ICASA hurries up with its spectrum audit, and gives small, entrepreneurial telcos real a crack at making the market for last-mile links more competitive.
One element you may notice that's recurrent in my New Year's wish list - government, and decisions it must make, correctly, and quickly. We have a new minister in Roy Padayachee, and he has his work cut out to fix a lot of things in how SA's comms environment is regulated.
Let's hope that 2011 is the year when SA's “non super-giant” telecoms industry players get the regulatory support they need to finally do what they so badly want to do - build successful, competitive businesses providing South African business with what it needs so badly - fast, reliable, cost-effective telecoms services.
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