SA: Electricity companies to power up phonelines

[MaD]

Yup we can do it once wireless has been legalised.. or everyone clubs together for a VANS licence.. or we can just go ahead and set up a renegade mesh.. yes that sounds good

 

[Peapod]

Oh bugger - a whole lot of stuff lost off this thread but luckily I remembered it!

MaD - A renegade Mesh? Now we are talking - we are dispersed enough to form mini meshes all over the country. If we set up enough of them, too many for the regulators to manage shutting down, it gives us HUGE ammo to get in front on the minister with.

And another thing - heres what the guru's from wire.less.dk (a million thank you's chaps - or should I say "mange mange tak") who wrote the papers in my last threads reponded to us with...

Dear Philippa,

appologies for responding to your mail though it is addressed to Sebastian and Tomas - I am also a recipient on wire.less.dk mails and am working with Tomas and Sebastian on various projects.

I'd just like to mention the Access to Broadband Campaign http://abcampaign.co.uk/ that ran over the last few years in the UK as I think that has some similarities to your campaign.

ABC came out of a group of wireless and community networkers who launched an initiative to to lobby for access to broadband in light of the so called 'market failure' of the incumbent (BT) to provide DSL. One of the key tools was to promote wireless as a means of competing with the incumbent and ABC became a very active forum with wide participation from both community networkers, public bodies, local authorities and industry.

The campaign came at a time when the incumbent had rolled out their ADSL offerings but only to the most lucrative parts of the country - those parts where upgrading the exchanges was immediatley profitable. The Access to Broadband Campaign took this lack of coverage as their starting point and promoted self provission or municipal open access networks as a means of providing access.

The campaign came at a time when there was much parallel activism surrounding trigger levels for the incumbent to upgrade exchanges to be ADSL enabled - but had far greater (I would say) impact. Firstly it gathered information and a wide range of groups who were effected by the lack of access - mainly from rural areas but also from metropolitan areas where margins were low - and secondly it promoted a strategy of direct competition with the incumbent by the construction of alternative infrastructures. This approach went far beyond what the regulator had to say about competition in broadband which had ammounted to equipment sharing at exchanges.

While there were already many community network projects in the UK ABC triggered a large number of both commercial plays and ones led by regional development agencies.

With questions begining to be raised in parliament, within a year the incumbent responded with a strategy of miraculously DSL enabling exchanges in areas they had previously said were uneconomic, dropping costs and accelerating rollout. In the face of this many of the wireless projects are either being scaled down, having diffiuculty with funding or being down right stopped. The exceptions are the grass roots led community and free networks which continue to make best use of new technologies to provide network alternatives at least in small areas. So what was bad for the new networks - and the structure of network ownership in the long term - had the unwanted positive side-effect of providing access to broadband albeit through the incumbent's improved coverage.

In the long run I'd say that an incumbent entrenched with cheap ADSL offerings is not really a desireable outcome as it continues to put control of the network in the hands of a monopoly or perhaps duoply operator, and sets up consumers to be held hostage to the incumbent at the next generational change of networking technologies.

Further ADSL is a far from perfect technology that helps maintain profitablitity for network operators by; piggy backing on an existing infrastructure - thereby being cheap, centralising networks in exchanges - thereby providing a billable choke point, and by being relativley slow - thereby creating a technology led scarcity ( and 'upgrade' path) in the network. (The reason telco's drag their feet installing it is because once its in they can wave good bye to their voice, leased line and voice revenues.)

So for my money while the goal is to provide low cost access to higher speed internet, widespread DSL is not nearly as attractive an option as a user owned and operated access network, with wireless being an obvious technology choice.

So my conclusion in this rather rambling mail is that your new focus on wireless and mesh that you describe to build alternative grass roots infrastructures will work better for you than trying to play the incumbents DSL game to your benefit. In the UK the pressure from competing wireless networks highlighted that there were perhaps fewer areas of market failure than had been claimed by the incumbent and a DSL rollout magically followed. But in many cases an alternative access network based on wireless gear, will operate fine well below the level here a telco can justify the outlay or make a profit.. and be politically preferable in the long term as well.

Building these networks require the skills transfer and capcaity building that tomas and sebastian are involved in and legal access to radio spectrum (that I focus on) rather than lobbying of regulators to push the incumbent into DSL provision. I'd say that even the consolation prize of a telco providing more competitive access is worth it.

While I know that he is very busy I would suggest that you get in touch with John Wilson - one of the original instigators of ABC (now stepped down) about the projects successes and failures - <johnresearch@hotmail.com> or one of the other executive members if he doesn't have the time.

Finaly just out of curiousity I read in one of your forums that you had succesfully petitionned Telkom on DSL in Ballito. Can I ask what's leading you to turn to wireless after what sounds like success there?

Well I hope this has been helpful and please feel free to get in touch if I can be of further help.

cheers

~/julian

Now that made me sit up and cheer so I am putting together a summary for John Wilson to fill him in on where we are and get some pointers

And then, Sebastian wrote back as follows;

dear phillippa,

i am really glad to see that Julian has already jumped in for slow little me and Tomas -
Julian knows a lot more about campaigning for broadband, telcos, etc than we (Tomas and me) do.

I agree very much with his views on DSL and how it might not be the best goal to go for, ultimately - that said, your DSL forum is a great initiative, and of course DSL can play it s part in the connectivity game, regardless of points of criticism that we have.
(writing these lines through an adsl of course ...
as for wire.less.dk, our focus is very much on
- creating viable alternatives to Telco-centralized broadband, via wireless
- community owned networks
- utilizing existing connectivity more effective by wireless sharing
- mesh networks (very much so)

like Julian, i d like to point you at some examples of what we re involved in and what could be relevant to you:
example of community wireless network in area of DSL failure in denmark: http://www.freifunk.net:8080/sc2004/wiki/DJURSLANDSNET

berlin city mesh network: http://olsrexperiment.de/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=48&lang=en
(a most impressive alternative infrastructure)

some of our activities:
http://wire.less.dk/?en.1.0

if we can help in any form, we d be glad to do so, where possible -

all the best,
sebastian

SO A CALL TO ACTION FOLKS

I propose we start lobbying immediately for the RIGHT to form mesh networks in our local communities with a view to lobbying government for the RIGHT to join them all up. If someone can think of a better way of putting this, please shout.

Also, someone mentioned on a lost post that we would still be reliant on Telkom for undersea cable for international connectivity - not so.
Old University of Durban Westville owned more undersea cable than telkom and was banned from leasing it out... I believe that CSIR bought it - not confirmed but am investigating.....watch this space.

 

[Peapod]

oh, and spot how both julian and sebastian have actually READ our forum posts!! whoohoo! I cant tell you how impressed I am.

 

[diabolus]

And since this topic is in the news again:

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0815/p13s01-stct.html

But now Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), with investments from big-name companies including Google and IBM, is beginning to move beyond small trial projects to deploying systems for large communities. For example, some 50,000 homes in the Cincinnati area have signed up for BPL Internet- service. And Manassas, Va., a town of 37,000, runs its own BPL service. "Our hope is that in the next two years you'll see millions of homes" using BPL, says Kevin Kushman, vice president of corporate development at CURRENT Communications Group in Germantown, Md. CURRENT is partnering with Cinergy Corp. to provide BPL in the Cincinnati area.

 

[R4tt3xx]

Well I know for a fact that the SAIX game servers (SGS) servers are housed in a CSIR building. Simply do a reverse-lookup on any SGS server IP. Oh and if you think that the PLC infrastructure is a pipe dream take a look at this.

PROOF

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2001/0105301240.asp?O=E

Since 2001 Transtel and Eskom have been installing a fibre Backbone in South AFrica. Please note that it's possible to PHASE OUT the need to access the undersea cable by connecting to other countries own PLC infrastructure.

Oh and for you ppl lucky enough to stay in Pretoria, check this out. It's amazing what happens when you use google.

http://www.delportdupreez.co.za/html/html/dpa_peon.htm

 

[freeek]

Phasing out the "access the undersea cable" will be a great blow 2 telkom.

 

[Celemasiko]

It sounds promising, hopefully Telscum cannot lay hands on. But whats about international bandwith?

 

[R4tt3xx]

Oh here is some more data, back in 2000 already.

http://www.taprojects.co.za/media_articles/media_article_1.asp

The Camden-Maputo line will include an optic fibre ground wire for telecommunication and this will be tapped at both Edwaleni II and Maputo substations.

Ppl this infrastructure has been in place for YEARS already and I doubt it has been fully tapped.

I am still looking for more net posts. Will keep you all posted

 

[R4tt3xx]

Incredible, I think Telkom is going to s*** themselves (hopefully)

http://www.eskom.co.za/about/Annual Report 2003/Enterprise/htm/2359 Final-0034.htm

I cant quote from this source, but it's an interesting read.

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/features/energy/?show=22530

The newly-constructed 400 kV power line from Aries, near Kenhardt, in South Africa to Kokerboom substation, near Keetmanshoop, offers potential for developments in the tele- communications industry due to the installation of fibre optics – suitable for high-speed data-transmission along the power line.

 

[scatlett]

There is no way government (main shareholder) will allow the cash cow to be hassled by competition.

There's still billions of Rands profits to be made.

I disagree, aren't the electricity companies also owned by government?

 

[AntiThesis]

I love eskom... I truly do. Please let this go as it should...

 

[R4tt3xx]

Heres something else. Quite an intresting article made in 2003 by a South African. I wonder if he is a part of MyBroadband, prehaps the admins could find out ?

http://blue.frogfoot.net/writing/2003-11_third_world_dog/