(Note: Written by Suveer Ramdhani) I participated as panelist at the MyBroadband Conference with Sameer Dave, MTN SA CTO, Johan Meyer, Telkom Head of Wholesale, Malcolm Kirby, DFA, Head of Marketing, and Kobus Stroeder, Vodacom and Chairman of WACS.

The conference was very well attended by several big names in telecoms despite the fact that it was scheduled over the same duration as AfricaCom, which is the major annual event for telecoms in Africa.

Audience questions focused on when price discounts would get to the end user and the panel converged on the need for investment on access networks by operators to increase throughput and volumes. I sensed tremendous frustrations in audience but I felt that tough questions were being held back. At the moment, the missing capacity link is the access network which is controlled by a handful of operators.

It seems the investment strategy of the operators are to defend areas that are being developed by new participants i.e. international capacity is developed by SEACOM but these operators are building WACS; DFA has built Metropolitan fibre and some long distance; Infraco has built long-distance capacity, but these operators are now building metro and long-distance fibre.

The key question is “Why is enough capital not being deployed behind access to the customer, whether fibre, 3G, WiMax etc?” Instead these operators are deploying capital to keep out new entrants and neglecting their own role in the value chain. MyBroadband has a reputation for asking the tough questions and should continue to do so. The conference was a success and will continue to stimulate thought about our industries development.