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With all due respect for the advantages of a commercial IXP, the UIXP
was first concieved as an ISP co-operation project. In my view to try to
commercialise it at this stage is nothing short of breach of trust.
BN, let people each make a choice which IXP they will join.
Personally I would not mind staying with the UIXP, irespective of the
challenges ahead.
Isaac K.
-------Original Message-------
From: Badru Ntege
Date: Saturday,
February 02, 2002 09:21:50 AM
Subject: 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.
-----Original Message----- 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.From: owner-techies@uixp.co.ug [mailto:owner-techies@uixp.co.ug]On Behalf Of Hans U. Haerdtle Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 12:58 AM To: Badru Ntege; techies@uixp.co.ug Cc: taskforce@uixp.co.ug Subject: Re: Proposed Management Team for the UIXP 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 | |||
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