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give effect to the constitutional right of access to any information held by the State and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

You can view the whole act on the website of the Department of International Affairs and Cooperation.  With Telkom being partly owned by the South African government, this seemed like a likely course of action.  Duly submitted, the response came back several weeks later in which our request was denied on every count.  Telkom’s Deputy Information Officer replied that:

In terms of Section 68, I decline to grant access to the records since they contain financial, commercial, scientific, and/or technical information, other than trade secrets, the disclosure of which is likely to cause harm to the commercial or financial interests of Telkom, and moreover contain information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to put Telkom at a disadvantage in contractual or other negotiations and/or prejudice Telkom in a commercial competition.

Even though we are invited to apply to court if we are “aggrieved by this decision” the terms of the refusal are so vague that we are unlikely to succeed via this route.  In the job application world, this would be called a PFO letter.

Just to be clear, we asked for a map of Telkom’s existing terrestrial fibre network, not even their plans for the future although that would be even better.  This is the kind of information that companies like Dark Fibre Africa and Liquid Telecom post freely on their websites.  In fact there are lots of African telecom companies that publicly post this information.  Evidently they think it is a good idea to communicate the reach of their networks.

But you know, publishing this information is not just a good idea for Telkom.  This is a good idea for South Africa.  If I have learned one thing from publishing a map of African Undersea Cables over the last 4 years, it is that it is possible to tell a different story about Africa, a connected 21st century Africa.  But right now that map still makes it look like all those cables stop at the beach.  There is an opportunity with this terrestrial fibre map for African countries to show off a little, to demonstrate that they are the best connected country on the continent, that they are THE destination when it comes to companies thinking about setting up African points of presence.

Surely, that is what the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of ICTs in Kenya must have been thinking when he replied to our request for information with a directive to his staff to gather and provide information on ALL terrestrial fibre optic cable projects in Kenya for use in the AfTerFibre map.

So this is where you come in Ms. Moholi.  As the comparatively new CEO of Telkom, this would be an easy way to demonstrate the new, more open face of Telkom by sharing that information and, in doing so, telling the world about Telkom, setting an example for other incumbents, and in general trumpeting South Africa’s extensive information infrastructure to the world.  What do you say?  There is a great South African story to tell here.

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Put simply, Open Access embodies the principle of enabling competition at every layer and every point of the communications infrastructure. Communications infrastructure depends on a chain of access and if even one link in the chain is controlled by a single entity, then the entire network is vulnerable to monopolistic rent-seeking behaviour. Thus to have Open Access, there must be competition in the provision international fibre access, national backhaul solutions, and last mile services, whether fixed, mobile, or nomadic. Not to mention competition in the provision of services over that network whether content or transaction related. The opposite of Open Access are vertical markets controlled by single entity or a small cartel of entities. A good example of this was as recently as 2007 when Telkom South Africa controlled access to the then only undersea cable, SAT3, and also controlled the fixed-line local loop. Now we have two and soon three undersea cables and a form of local-loop unbundling for Internet service provision.

On Wednesday morning, I shall have the good fortune to engage Yochai Benkler in a discussion on the topic of Open Access infrastructure in Africa and inspired by the range and thoughtfulness of the feedback that Erik Hersmann obtained recently when he asked “What would you say to Nokia Africa?“, I thought this might be another opportunity crowdsource some perspectives on Open Access in Africa. For the record, I am not referring to the Open Access initiative for academic publishing. That is an excellent initiative but unrelated to Open Access infrastructure policies.

Yochai Benkler, author of the Wealth of Networks, was also the Principal Investigator for a comparative study of broadband initiatives carried out by the Berkman Center and commissioned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Entitled “Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world“, it reviewed efforts, mostly in OECD countries, to strategically develop pervasive, affordable, high-speed access infrastructure. A key finding of the study was that countries that have successfully implemented Open Access policies tended to have better and more affordable access.

That brings to Wednesday. Yochai’s experience is more in the rich world. My goal is to provide an overview of attempts, successes, failures to implement Open Access policies in Africa. I know some of these stories but it would make the conversation that much more interesting to have other stories to draw on. In exchange, I promise to post back what I’ve learned from our conversation.

Help me out, please?

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Zulu telephone wire basket image courtesy of Ethekwinigirl

Today I want to push back a little (just a little) against the conventional wisdom that mobiles are the only communications infrastructure future for Africa. There is an implicit understanding in ICT4D work in Africa that mobiles are the future and fixed lines are an archaic hangover from an inefficient, monopolistic, state-run, colonial past. Perhaps I exaggerate for the sake of effect but it is hard to argue with when development agencies are racing to jump on the “mobile for development” train.

So let’s look at the evidence. Mobile infrastructure continues to grow beyond all expectation in Africa while fixed line infrastructure has mostly remained static or even declined in some cases. On the face of it, this appears to support the case for Africa’s “mobile” future. The implicit understanding in this is that mobiles are just better on so many levels that natural selection will cause fixed lines to atrophy like some vestigial evolutionary accident. I don’t want to challenge the remarkable value of mobile phones but I do want to challenge the notion that they are a complete replacement for fixed lines. Fixed lines are a complementary technology that have a role to play in any communications ecology.

What is a Fixed Line?

Before I go into detail why, it is worth unpacking what is a fixed line. Fixed lines in Africa are generally understood to mean the legacy copper infrastructure held by the former incumbent monopoly telco. So fixed lines already start off with a bad rap, being associated with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and incompetence. It gets worse though because the value of copper as a commodity has made existing phone lines a popular target for theft. This has the dual effect of making copper phone lines seem even more unreliable than when they were simply being poorly maintained and also disincentivising the fixed-line operator from continuing to invest in copper infrastructure. The final nail in the coffin is that telcos don’t offer copper phone lines on a pay-as-you-go basis. Pay-as-you-go is well-known as one of the key enablers of the mobile revolution but copper fixed lines are just too expensive too offer on a pay-as-you-go basis. Arguably things don’t look good for the fixed line.

But copper wires are just one kind of fixed line. A fixed line is just communication connection that doesn’t move about. Fixed wireless, such as the CDMA-based service being offered by Neotel and others on the continent is another kind of fixed line. One particular benefit of this technology is that it typically operates in a different spectrum range from mobile services which means that operators can deploy fixed wireless solutions without having to have or compete for expensive and scarce GSM spectrum licenses.  WiFi also has the potential to offer fixed line services.  The increasing availability of WiFi on mobile phones point to interesting possibilities in terms of mixing communication infrastructures.

So Why Fixed Line?

But still, why would you bother? The mobile phone so personal, so ubiquitous that it trumps the fixed line in every way… or does it? Here are a few reasons why I think the fixed line, if it overcomes currrent technological challenges, may be around for a while.

1) Sometimes you don’t want to call an individual. For any institution, be it school, police station, hospital or corner shop, when you call them you are generally more interested in being connected with services associated with the institution rather than a particular person. This is not limited to institutions. When I call home, I am happy to talk to whoever is home. There is almost a happy serendipity to whoever answers the phone.  Your brother that you don’t always get on with perhaps… a connection made that maintains social ties.

2) Fixed wireless can be cheaper than mobile. Not having to deploy ubiquitous mobile coverage means that fixed wireless can be rolled out at a much lower cost that mobile infrastructure as it can be done in a more boot-strapped fashion than mobile services. The fact that fixed wireless is currently mostly deployed by existing telcos using relatively expensive CDMA gear means that the full benefit of this option has yet to be realised. Full disclosure: I am betting that the Village Telco can offer fixed WiFi voice and data services in a manner which is both affordable and complementary to mobile services.

3) A full-size handset can be a beautiful thing. A handset that comfortably isolates the ear are not necessary in a fixed line solution. I note with interest companies like Native Union and SparkFun that connect a traditional handset with your mobile technology of choice.

Summing Up

This post was triggered by reading that Rwandatel recently reported a seven percent increase in fixed line subscribers. When you think about it, it’s obvious. Both fixed and mobile solutions are useful. The challenge for fixed line provision is to be as cheap and payment-flexible as a mobile solution. As I have said before, the future is not mobile but rather a seamless experience over an ecology of heterogeneous networks. Emerging IEEE standards such as 802.21 and 802.11u offer the promise of interoperability across WiFi and mobile networks. See recent blog posts by David Isenberg, Bill St. Arnaud, and Brough Turner that point in this direction.

Finally, it is slightly ironic that from an ICT development policy perspective, we urge regulators and policy-makers to adopt a technology neutral stance so as to accommodate the always unpredictable evolution of technology. A more technology neutral stance on the part of development agencies themselves might not be a bad thing.

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For me, Syndrome’s monologue highlighted how important it is to have not just access but affordable access in Africa. Perhaps this seems obscure but stay with me.

Communications infrastructure has the potential for impact in two different dimensions. The first is efficiency and we have seen a abundant evidence of that at both micro and macro economic level. Communication infrastructure makes everything easier. It can turn an individual into an enterprise and it can drive down the incidence of mortality from malaria. Amazing. But that is just half of the story. The other half is innovation. The kind of innovation that gave birth to Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. Innovation that is enabled by having low to non-existent penalties for failure.

When access is expensive, the lesson from failure is a painful one. Clay Shirky put this best in an interview a few months ago. He said,

You need a very low cost of experimentation, right? If things are expensive to try people will hold back from trying them and they’ll spend all their time trying not to fail. If the cost of experimentation falls though, and I mean falls precipitously, then people will spend a lot of time experimenting, and instead of not failing, the goal becomes to fail informatively to learn something from the things you tried.

In the rich world, where few think twice about bandwidth caps or how many mobile phone calls or text messages they can afford to send in a day, innovation is rife.  The rich world is busy generating new ideas and business models faster than people can digest them.  Lots of them are complete nonsense but that is kind of the point.  Instead of predicting the future like the mobile operators in Africa are trying to do with specialised products and services, the future is emerging in the rich world through an evolutionary explosion of new ideas and businesses.

So here is my Syndrome message: Low cost of access can turn a country into a super-power by enabling everyone to be an innovator, allowing everyone to explore the adjacent possible.  This explosion of innovation is non-linear.  Increasingly, any country without  very low cost access is like a child left on the platform as the train of the knowledge economy pulls out.  Africa has a billion resilient, amazing, creative people in it. A very tiny percentage of them have the kind of wealth that would give them freedom to innovate without fear of failure.  It’s great that mobiles have created more efficiencies on the continent and some innovation.   Driving down the cost of access will give African countries super innovation powers… and when everyone’s super….

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