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CHAPTER 13 Open Access in Africa The Case of Mauritius russell southwood, abiodun jagun, and willie currie How do African countries expand access to the Internet? A significant barrier to the region’s development has been the high price of bandwidth into and out of African countries, which has until recently come through a single submarine cable—the South Atlantic Telephony-3/West African Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC). The prices charged for international bandwidth in countries connected to the cable are controlled by the SAT3 consortium member for each country, each of which has been granted a national monopoly . The consortium member is also the country’s largest incumbent telecom operator. In 2006, thirteen SAT3/WASC/SAFE member countries met to discuss the end of national monopolies. During these discussions it became clear that a critical aspect to obtaining open and fair access to SAT3/WASC lies in regulation. Unfortunately, regulators have found it hard to grasp the issues surrounding the submarine cable. A particular area of weakness has been in understanding how to facilitate access to the cable at a price that is reasonable. This project emerged as an effort to provide regulators with background and analysis to help them formulate appropriate responses to this issue. A multicountry case study approach was employed. This was felt to be an appropriate approach in examining the issues relating to SAT-3/WASC in the context in which they occur. The approach sought to facilitate an understanding of the unique factors and circumstances prevailing in each country that influenced access to and the cost of SAT-3/WASC capacity. Key research activities included the analysis of documents and reports; collation of predefined performance indicators using a standardized template 257 258 r u ss e l l s o u th w o od , a bi o d un j a gu n , an d w il l i e c u r ri e specifically developed for the research; and a series of face-to-face interviews with representatives of a cross-section of relevant stakeholder groups, including telecom operators—fixed-line, mobile and Internet Service Providers (ISPs)—government representatives, regulators, and members of civil society organizations. These case studies addressed a number of subject areas. First, they provided a description of the country’s telecom market. This included a brief description of the SAT-3/WASC consortium member and changes in the country’s telecom environment (regulation, number of players and so on) prior to and after the commissioning of SAT-3/WASC. Second, they provided performance indicators assessing the success of the country’s use of SAT-3/WASC. This included capacity, cost of services and subscription and usage figures. Where relevant, these indicators were compared with alternative infrastructures such as satellite. Third, the case studies included an analysis of access. This included documenting (where data were available) who has access to the cable and how this access is decided. The case studies also focused on identifying barriers to access that exist in each country, including regulatory (licensing), legal, financial (in terms of cost of access) and political barriers. Finally, the case studies included an overview of the state of the national backhaul infrastructure. This analysis was conducted as a proxy for assessing external limitations to the performance of the SAT3 /WASC cable by measuring the ability of the country to use the cable irrespective of the barriers that are the result of the consortium member. These case studies were a collaboration between researchers and the Association for Progressive Communication (APC). The APC is an international network of civil society organizations dedicated to empowering and supporting groups and individuals working for peace, human rights, development , and protection of the environment through the strategic use of information and communication technologies. The APC seeks to influence at national and global levels, both the policy process—that is, the development , implementation, or monitoring of policy—and the content of policy, with the objective of ensuring that themes identified as critical to equality and development are included in policies, while aspects of policies that are likely to affect society negatively are modified or removed. The APC also recognizes that key to achieving its advocacy objectives is the access it has to relevant and up-to-date information on policy issues, and the understanding it has of the concepts and indicators that define these issues. By having such access and understanding, the APC is able to...

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