On Thursday 09 September 2004 09:50, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/9/32/384888
There are 2 questions here: a) Does government restrict the sector to maintain high taxable revenues from current incumbents, or b) Does government deregulate so there is increased penetration of telephone services, with increased quality of service, reduced costs to end users and a wider taxable base? Chicken and egg, maybe? But personally, I hear what Khan is saying. The market is, indeed, small, and an increase in national operators will have an effect on the addressable numbers (operators aren't in the business of charity). In this instance, limiting the number of national operators or incumbents may not be such a bad move by UCC. However, I think the UCC should open up the market to other smaller players, the "competitives", that will offer telephone services to end users using other protocols - hey IP comes to mind :). While the operating overheads of "competitives" will allow them to charge much lower rates than current networks, key providers in the sector (UTL, MTN, CelTel) don't have to lose out entirely; they already have the network infrastructure installed, something "competitives" can't afford to do. Voluntarily, or by UCC mandate, "competitives" may used the incumbents' infrastructure to offer last mile VoIP solutions to end users, corporates, call centres, data centres, phone booths, e.t.c. These are additional voice minutes flying on the incumbents' network (that they probably didn't have), from which they can realise significant revenues. The end-users would then enjoy low-cost local and international telephone calls, while increasing the potential user-base, a goal that I think is outlined somewhere in UCC's paperwork. Mark. _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug %LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
