Sean Moroney, Aitec Africa chairman, has urged telecom operators to look beyond crude competitive capitalism and find ways of sharing infrastructure to accelerate the roll-out of services across various networks.
Moroney stated this at the 2008 Mozambique Information and Communications technology (ICT) Convention. He said that the market has matured significantly over the past five years, with a multiplication of ICT service providers and vendors, and increasingly sophisticated installations by major companies.
“But all this is but a precursor to the major impact that will result from the landing of two undersea fibre cables within the next two years. The shortage and cost of bandwidth are suddenly no longer going to be major constrains on the development of the sector. However, this also presents great challenges,” he said.
Moroney said there is the need to plan now, to break down the internal monopolistic barriers that could continue to maintain bandwidth costs at a high level despite international availability.
“The last five years have also seen a dramatic spread of mobile services. But again, this has been constrained by a duopolistic regime based on a simplistic system of capitalistic competition. The egomania of uncreative competitive capitalism has created what I call the country’s “twin tower” landscape, where up and down the national highways duplicate sets of towers are set up within a stone’s throw of each other,” he stated.
According to him operators think they can demonstrate competitiveness through duplication infrastructure, instead of sharing infrastructure and competing at the far more meaningful level of quality of service. One industry estimate is that the cost of tower construction represents 70% of network roll-out investment. It is great business for the tower construction contractors but I think any first year University student would conclude that this approach imposes a major constraint on telecommunications infrastructure development.
Government and the private sector he said need to put their heads together to agree on an optimum strategy for the rapid roll-out of low-cost bandwidth on a shared infrastructure basis.
“I am making these points in all humility as an outsider, but with the interests of Mozambique and Africa very close to my heart. Perhaps it helps being an outsider to provide some fresh perspectives.”
Moroney suggested that vendors and service providers could form an ICT suppliers association, which could require members to subscribe to a code of business ethics.
“Some may not join; some may join and still transgress the code. But at least a bench-mark of ethical behaviour would have been established to which the industry as a whole could aspire. The association could play other valuable roles, such as lobbying and advising the government on legislation and regulations affecting the industry, working with Universities and other training institutions on course content and qualification standards; also working with them on internship and mentoring programmes, even creating scholarship programmes.”
He explained that ICT professionals could form a National ICT Society to represent the interests of ICT users. This could also adopt a code of conduct to resist corrupt practices creeping in to the awarding of ICT contracts. But the objectives could be much wider than that, to include issues of professional development, education, lobbying and advising government. Unfortunately ICT professionals across Africa tend to work in isolation, with very little dialogue with, or support from, fellow professionals. We need to create a more supportive, intellectually stimulating environment for ICT professionals to improve standards across the board and help stem the brain drain which continues to erode the county’s ICT skills capacity.
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