Undersea cable for Africa (TEAMS)

In following up to this item, you might be interested in this article, which is relatively rich in cost information. By the way, this site has information on other cable projects as well. Some tidbits for the TEAMS project:

• The project will involve the construction of a 4,887-km submarine telecoms cable linking the Kenyan coast with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The project will cost an estimated $110-million (or US$22,500/km). The cable has an expected lifetime of 25 years.
  
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• "Capacity will be allocated at cost with TEAMs investors paying $400,000 per STM1 per year. This translates to $2580.645 per megabit per year up to Fujairah and $ 215.00 megabit per month."
  
• "TEAMs shareholders are expected to operate on an Internal Rate of Return of 32.71 per cent with a pay back of 2.4 years."
  
• "Transit costs from Fujairah to Europe and US stands at between $55,000 to $100,000 per year"
  
  

The cost is considerably below the estimated US$70,000/km for the Guyana project ... why might this be the case?

700 MHz auctions, Google and more

There has been a bit of talk over the past months on Google's wireless ambitions. Certainly, Android is a part of it, but the speculation has also centered on Google's ambitions to be a wireless operator. To that end, this item over at GigaOm was the most insightful analysis that I have yet read. Om Malik concludes that it is unlikely that Google will become a wireless operator, and is instead using the upcoming 700 MHz auction to beat current carriers up over their network policies.

To that end, the NY Times is anticipating higher auction returns in this article because of the WRC agreement that was just concluded. I really doubt it, because there is no tangible value that the WRC reallocation added for US carriers.

Finally, I found this item, also from GigaOm intriguing. If Google is indeed making its own 10 Gbps switches, it seems as though we may be witnessing the re-incarnation of the vertically integrated Bell System (albeit without the market power). Interesting how times change ... I think there is little doubt that the Bell System benefitted from having a captive R&D and manufacturing capability. Is Google discovering that as well?

Update (2007-11-20): You might find this item interesting. Do you think Google should pay attention to analysts?

World Radio Conference

The ITU-R's World Radio Conference is nearing its end. There has been little reported (that I am aware of) beyond this item. You might find this site useful if you want some more details that you won't find on the official site (at least without paying for it). If you do a search on "WRC-07", you'll find an array of position papers and a few reports beyond this one. I guess it isn't that interesting to the population at large, even though the stakes are enormous.

WiMAX news

WiMax got a few boosts over the past week:

• This article reports that WiMAX has been approved as an ITU standard. This endorsement means that it will be easier for companies to get spectrum for this technology. Since the ITU is a treaty organization, this approval can, in some countries, serve as an enabler for its adoption.
  
• This article reports that Taiwan has made commitments to invest in WiMAX networks
  
• Sprint has announced plans to continue its WiMAX rollout, despite the change in their executive suite.
  

Standards committee turf wars

This item, a dispute and "turf war" between two standards committees, is nothing new in this relatively fractured world of standards development. Liaisons between committees help, but, as this article shows, doesn't always solve the problem. IETF is a relative upstart in this world, so it isn't surprising to me that such a dispute would have occurred. It wasn't the first and won't be the last.

Telecoms, taxes and growth in Uganda

I found this item interesting. Many studies of telecoms adoption, penetration and growth focus on industrialized countries, so it is nice to see a thorough analysis of telecoms in a developing country, such as Uganda. Also, this study clearly shows that people respond to prices and taxes in their consumption and use. In many cases, high taxes on telecoms are justified because they are thought to be either "luxuries" or business-oriented, which are thought to be more able to afford higher taxes. This report would seem to suggest that there are unintended consequences of that view.

US Broadband rankings

It is not hard to find references on the Internet to the comparative broadband statistics published by the OECD and the ITU. Thus, it is interesting when an alternative methodology or analysis is posted, such as this one (the direct URL to the report, bypassing CNET is here). Quoting the paper:

To provide policymakers a tool to compare broadband subscription rates between countries, this PAPER develops and presents the Broadband Performance Index (BPI). This index quantifies the relationship between a country’s broadband subscriptions per capita and that country’s economic and demographic endowments. This approach is policy-relevant because it strips away many factors over which telecom policymakers have very little influence or control. As a result, we believe that the BPI provides telecom policymakers with a method of comparing broadband subscription rates among countries that is superior to existing measurements, all of which depend upon raw data that do not take these factors into account.

We compute the Broadband Performance Index for each OECD country by first estimating the relationship between these endowments and broadband subscriptions, and we use that information to compare how that country performs relative to expectations. The index for each country indicates whether a country’s broadband subscription rate meets, exceeds, or falls below what would be reasonably expected for that country, given its demographic and economic endowments.

Some of our findings will be of significant interest to policymakers. For example, we find that the United States generally meets expectations in its conversion of its national endowments into broadband subscriptions. This finding conflicts with claims that the United States is in a “broadband ditch” and is failing to perform up to expectations, at least with respect to subscriptions.

Also, we find that many relatively poor countries, like Turkey and Portugal, which actually rank behind the United States according to the OECD, are doing a better job of converting their national endowments into broadband penetration than many highly ranked countries. Indeed, many countries that rank higher than the United States according to the OECD, like Denmark and Norway, are in fact underperforming the United States when one considers demographic and economic factors.

Update (2007/7/25): You might find this item over at Marginal Revolution interesting and relevant.

Do you think this approach has merit? How much should a nation's policy be guided by how it ranks internationally with other countries?

Recent international meetings of interest

You might enjoy the papers located at this OECD site. OECD's interest is preparation for a ministerial level meeting on this subject that is scheduled for 2008.

In a similar fashion, the ITU recently held a workshop on spectrum management. This workshop addressed the use of market mechanisms as well as spectrum trading. They also held another workshop on "The Future of Voice", which addressed (among other things) voice communications in NGNs.