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FW: Proposed Management Team for the UIXP
A
number of good ideal situation points have been raised, but lets get a few
points in perspective.
The
internet per se has been in Uganda for a few years now, but it's failure to
exceed 1% of the population should not be placed on the fact that computers are
too expensive. I think this is a fallacy, the fact is we in the industry
failed to educate the market, As Service and Solution providers when you bring
all these new products, we have to realise that the main decision maker is not
the guy who signs the cheque but the techies, these are our fast line customers,
they make the decision. We need to give them the opportunity to learn and
experience new technologies.
We are
talking about an IXP here with all due respect If there is an ISP in Uganda with
top secret proprietary routing software, I'm more than
impressed.
The
Commercial IXP has been tried and the jury is still out on that one. Our
market is still too young to commercialize right now. We are all in this
business to make money and believe the industry will grow. But it's our
responsibility to grow the industry. It took us this long to get an IXP
because of closed fence views.
lets
put a fresh approach on this, participation I suggest would be by choice and I
do believe we have a number of companies non service providers who will be so
eager to sponsor employees.
Who
knows these guys might even go out after this and support a future attempt on
running a commercial IXP, this time with the knowledge and experience, the
luxury I believe the earlier commendable attempt did not
have.
Well, certainly a very noble idea from a technical
point of view, but practically I don't see this working. Building a skill base
of engineers and gaining expertise is certainly in any good and professionally
run company's very own interest and training will be provided to their technical
staff.
This is simply necessary in our industry because the most advanced
technology applied will give the respective company the competitive edge in the
market. And this is directly proportional to the company's business success due
to client appreciation of superior QoS standards and delivery. Of course paired
with marketing and sales efforts.
Let's be realistic: How do you address
the issue of conflict of interest? By nature of their work and involvement the 3
proposed rotating staff members would need to have a considerable if not
in-depth knowledge of all the member ISPs network concepts and architecture.
This includes company proprietary software at least to some extend plus even
future planned upgrades and introduction of new services. Introduced for the
very reason: to provide better performing and more advanced services to their
clients and to the industry and market as a whole - and gain market shares! In a
fair competition and respecting proper business ethics. And this very
competition is the driving force of any market improvement and clients and the
industry are the very beneficiaries of this.
Don't get me wrong: As a
techie I am, this suggestion is certainly a noble vision and I could support
this within a University or Institute environment or even between large industry
participants who put high level specialists together in a scientific research
joint-venture for reasons of cost and resource sharing. But all this are
laboratory setups with fundamental scientific research tasks still far away from
practical applications and never close to near-to-market-delivery solutions
which are already in the hands of the marketing managers keenly watching market
tendencies and deciding on tactical release dates.
The IXP is certainly a
very useful institution but let's be honest: It is in the first place a
commercial issue and not an inter-networking or technology challenge. This very
knowledge is the skill base anyway of the respective member company and a good
part of its success in the market. It is the commercial issue, which makes an
IXP desirable because of the possible cost saving element. Just like an
interconnect arrangement between telecom operators. For the ISP industry in
Uganda this will be a saving on relatively expensive international bandwidth,
which is at this moment still only available through expensive V-Sat links. Link
redundancy could be an additional feature provided that interconnect capacity
requirements are met and a commercial agreement is in place.
Therefor the
IXP is a commercial issue and a facilitation provision and it has its
operational costs for a professional setup and running. Depending on the
respective local interconnect traffic of a potential member it is viable or not.
Like any other business case. Otherwise even now any two or more companies could
go together and setup private interconnectivity for cost saving or other
resource sharing reasons.
Also additional data interconnect facilities
could be offered by the IXP for wider industry applications (WAN and VPN) or
even regional inter-networking could be proposed (if telecom operators are part
of this) with ultimately load balancing, resource sharing or link redundancy
features and benefits (i.e. Euroring). But this is certainly a different scale
and would require a complete different setup and approach in terms of
inter-networking architecture and commercial requirements.
In my view,
the IXP has to be an independent and neutral commercial entity, a service
provider with an offer to the market to provide and manage interconnect
facilities and value added services with standard connectivity interfaces and
scaled link capacities.
Hans U. Haerdtle
General
Manager
Infocom
At 09:04 PM 2/1/02 +0200, Badru Ntege wrote:
Members please find below a suggested method of
running the IXP. This would
help us build a good skill base of
engineers and also enable professional
networking between engineers from
different companies and network providers.
There will be Three
People detailed to work at the UIXP.
1. Project Leader
2. Team
member
3. Team Member.
The Project leader will overall be
responsible for the running of the
UIXP. Ensuring that the UIXP is up and
running at all times and will be
the team leader.He will also be
responsible for future planning at the
IXP, preparing progress reports,
billing of members, and attracting new
members to using the IXP and
enforcing the UIXP Acceptable Use Policy.
He shall be employed on a 6
months - 1 year basis at which point his
contract can either be renewed or
some other member takes up the role.
The team members will be technical
people from the participating entities
who
will rotate on a 3 month
basis. These team members will still be full time
employees at their
repective places of work and will be doing part time
work at the IXP. The
IXP will pay them a small fee on top of what they get
form their parent
companies for the period that they work at the IXP. The
team leader will
also be an employee of one of the ISPs doing part time at
his place of
work.
Thus at the end of three months, the two technical people go back
to their
respective places of work and another team of two from some other
members
take up work for the next three months. At the end of 1 year, the
current
team leader would either move back to his place of work, or his
contract
could be renewed for another 1 year period.
IN case of the
former, then one of the other technical people probably one
who interned
with the old team leader can take over as the next team
leader. The
outgoing team leader is free and encouraged to apply to do a
three month
stint as just a team member if he so desires under the new
team leader
provided of course that his parent company is willing to
release him
further.
It is assumed that all these people remain on payroll at their
parent
companies and will work at the UIXP as part time people. it is
estimated
that to maintain 10 hours working time from say 8.00 a.m. to 6.00
p.m. 7
days a week this would come down to 23 hours per person per week. On
any
one day of the week, one of the team is on call and can be called at
any
time in case of a failure at the UIXP.
Emoluments for the team
will be as follows:
Team leader: Ush. 480,000/=
Team
member 1: Ush. 190,000/=
Team member 2: Ush. 190,000/=
This on top
of what their parent companies decide to pay them per month.
It is up to
the parent companies to decide whether they will adjust
their employee's
salaries during this period or not.
This is done with a vision of
creating a skilled and knowledgeable work
force so as to enhance the
industry. We believe the knowledge gained would
be useful to the
participants back in their parent companies.
Badru
Ntege
General Manager
Technical Director
Sanyutel Ltd
mob: +256
777 000 88
Tel: +256 41 345 466
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