Is Sentech operating outside its mandate?

[rpm]

Sentech operating outside its mandate?

"There needs to be clarity about their mandates and why they continue to be managed by separate departments"

 

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My guess is yes. On the basis of public information, Sentech clearly has no budget to do what they are doing (when did they ever?), and I would guess that they probably do not have broad government support, especially since NEPAD was really a Thabo Mbeki thing.

A landing station alone (excluding what they would have to spend on the cable as a consortium member) is likely to be $5m - $10m. More likely, they'd be looking at anything from $25m to $50m of OUR MONEY. Like most other things that Sentech touches, it obviously won't be profitable (what kind of investor buys into the fourth new cable in three years?), so we'll basically be paying for it, with money that could presumably have gone into providing terrestrial HDTV, which is what Sentech is supposed to do. This is very different to WACS, where all the major SA telcos are investing their own money, and will actually deliver real competing services.

Let's hope that the General is not doing what Ivy used to do, which was to try to use Sentech as a weapon in the market (e.g. MyWireless), only to have it all fall apart when she tried to get broad cabinet and treasury backing for hair-brained schemes. There was ongoing "competition" between DoC (Sentech) and DPE (Infraco), to see who could waste more government money on being a player rather than a referee.

For the country, much as it might seem sensible to have as many cables as possible, one really does have to question who would foot the bill for ACE, and whether we really want yet another inefficient state enterprise doing this kind of thing.

Not much has been said about Baharicom - Bahari is Swahili for Sea - but they make the Sheik brothers look like ethical businessmen, the only real difference being that they appear to have no money (yet). This is hardly good company for the South African government.

 

[MidnightWizard]

Birds of a Feather

Not much has been said about Baharicom - Bahari is Swahili for Sea - but they make the Sheik brothers look like ethical businessmen, the only real difference being that they appear to have no money (yet).
This is hardly good company for the South African government.

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I always look forward to your posts

You are obviously involved in the industry somewhere / somehow as your information / knowledge just says "insider"

However -- as to your last sentence ........

I am more inclined to say fitting company for the SA goverment


MW

 

[rpm]

I also don’t understand why on earth Sentech will land the ACE cable. They don’t have an established fibre network, and to the best of my knowledge don’t have much experience in this arena. In fact, I think they lost most of their telecoms expertise over the last few years to Vodacom/Neotel/Telkom/IS et c.

It makes far more sense to use one of the established players…one would assume that a landing agreement with Neotel or Telkom makes more sense. You can even use the same infrastructure as for SAT3/SAFE or WACS if need be.

And has Sentech not showed us all that it may be better at serving the SABC than at playing in the telecoms space?

 

[Kaufies]

I also don’t understand why on earth Sentech will land the ACE cable.

+1. I had no idea who/what Sentech was before I joined MyBB. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out though

 

[Sting]

My father-in-law, now a pensioner, was a manager at Sentech and left just after they became a separate entity and "transformed". He was also part of a group that strongly advised them not to go the analogue satellite route in the mid-90's. They were ignored and 3 years later, after it had cost us taxpayers plenty of money, they pulled the plug and realised that digital satellite was the better solution!!!

A very knowledgeable gentleman who is extremely upset at the way that Sentech has been managed and manipulated over the last few years; he also has no clue as to why Sentech would want their own undersea cable....

 

[ProAsm]

He was also part of a group that strongly advised them not to go the analogue satellite route in the mid-90's.

And that same "analogue" guy went and headed up ICASA.
I clearly remember those days.
He came down to Durban to lecture us on this fantastic system and when I questioned him about it, it nearly cost me my job as "digital" was a swear word

 

[Luf]

Iv got to agree with RPM and all of you on the Sentech thing.

BUT, if not Sentech then who? Is Telkom or Neotel or even Broadband Infraco able to land the ACE System given their extensive investment in other cable systems.

Are they in the finacial position to invest somemore money in a cable system that will bring maybe to much bandwidth to South Africa?
Had an interview with Mr Ewan Sutherland and he was saying that with all the cable systems, from a business perspective its going to be hard keeping them all profitable - there is just too much compitition now.

I think the bottem line is that money to fund this has to come from Government and Sentech is the only Gov. enterprise (left) that has the 'skill and knowledge' to do so.

I am very worried that from a business perspective, that not all cable systems are going to be sutainable in the long-term.

 

[Necuno]

[-]Sentech[/-] Government operating outside its mandate?

"There needs to be clarity about their mandates and why they continue to be managed by separate departments"

there.

 

[ic]

Iv got to agree with RPM and all of you on the Sentech thing.

BUT, if not Sentech then who? Is Telkom or Neotel or even Broadband Infraco able to land the ACE System given their extensive investment in other cable systems.

Are they in the finacial position to invest somemore money in a cable system that will bring maybe to much bandwidth to South Africa?
Had an interview with Mr Ewan Sutherland and he was saying that with all the cable systems, from a business perspective its going to be hard keeping them all profitable - there is just too much compitition now.

I think the bottem line is that money to fund this has to come from Government and Sentech is the only Gov. enterprise (left) that has the 'skill and knowledge' to do so.

I am very worried that from a business perspective, that not all cable systems are going to be sutainable in the long-term.

I've highlighted some aspects||issues in your post that I want to comment on.

Firstly, I really do not think that Sentech has the skills nor the knowledge nor the vaguest ability to properly manage a submarine cable landing station nor associated bandwidth nor the distribution thereof. Sentech has lost a lot of experienced employees, and really does not have enough savvy people left that would be able to pull off a project of this nature. It could be argued that Sentech could outsource the work to contractors [as many parastatals do after retrenching their technical people], but who is going run the landing station and maintain the systems when the contracts come to an end, and more importantly where is the money going to come from to pay for any of this?

Secondly, I think there is a significant amount of looming competition with all the new submarine cables soon to be landing in SA, and there have to be concerns about financial sustainability, which is all the more reason why guavamint should not get involved at all - neither Sentech nor Broadband Infraco should land ACE in SA - if guavamint does allow this to continue, what will happen is that tax payers will foot the bill and the bandwidth will be mismanaged and tax payers will never see the benefit of the ACE cable.

If the ACE cable is landed by one or more private companies, those companies will be forced to come up with ingenious ways to compete with the other cables that land in SA, or go bankrupt trying - at least that way tax payers will not have to foot the bill for something that is potentially doomed to failure - especially with Sentech's track record for disaster.

Still, the questions raised in the article, need to be answered by guavamint - why is Sentech allowed to stray away from its TV+Radio broadcasting mandate, and encroach on what is clearly Broadband Infraco's mandate...

 

[Luf]

^^ Thanks IC. Interesting post, and I agree with you completely.

However, I am still wondering if not Government landing ACE, then who?

Is there a Private company (or group of companies) who are in a finacial position to land ACE - given the fact that it requires extremely high capital and in light of the fact that returns on investment will likely to be low (given the high level of competition that will likely be around by the time ACE lands).

On a side note, Are majority Internationally owned cables allowed to land in South Africa?
Remember the former and late Minister stating that all new systems have to be majority South African (or African?) owned. Or was that clause removed?

Even if ACE could be landed by International companies it still begs the question whether the cable system has a good business case. I do see it having one as the demand for bandwidth in SA is much much lower than all the new cables will bring. Return on investment is to low and will take to long to attract the interest of private companies.

 

[Sting]

It is because there are so many new cables landing (deals already signed) that makes this move by Sentech questionable. Is there an ulterior motive? It cannot be from a business perspective as it will be economic suicide.

/and it's our money...

 

[apogeeza]

at this point I don't care WHO lands ACE, just land it. Then, let the dogs feed.

We have not benefited one iota yet for SEACOM (thanks InterNOT Solutions for gobbling the profit and bandwidth and not passing any benefits) WACS does not look any better (look who's fingers are in the pie and look at their track-record) so to any additional cables that can possibly help to break their (ISP's and other incumbent telecoms) stranglehold on the supply, I say "bring it on."

I don't care it's beyond their mandate, just bring it on. Who knows, we might be lucky and actually get some real broad in this band of ours, and if Sentech/ACE is it, then so be it.