Sunday, August 17, 2008

Olympics, Masai Mara and infrastructure sharing

It was sad that KBC was erratic in showing Olympics live. It was erratic and not-understandable, they were showing some funny live matches and the most important to us were delayed or not shown at all, or maybe they did at midnight.

But on Sunday, they televised live from Beijing and from Masai Mara courtesy of KTN. It was nice to see the KBC screen split, showing updates from Beijing and Masai Mara. You can imagine what will happen when we have the fiber and cost of bandwidth becomes cheaper, KIXP will experience great local capacity.

Infrastructure sharing is not new in Kenyan media, in the past, KBC was offering the link during the national holidays like Kenyatta day, we are yet to see NTV and KTN collaborating on some live events.

I wish our telecoms sector would be the same, that when the Safaricom masts become congested, some of the traffic can be moved to zain, so that communication is not interrupted. But again, that may only be a pipe dream.

6 comments:

bankelele said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bankelele said...

On the lack of infrastructure sharing, every other week, you'll find a new ditch across a major road, or a pavement town up somehere in town as new cable is laid

REBECCA WANJIKU said...

Thanks Bankelele,

Thats the position even in SA.

I think the government should create more incentives for people to share and in some cases force people to share.
E.g say that no more masts for new GSM operators, let them share the existing ones.
Can you imagine when we get 10 operators, 10 different masts in the areas?

Shiko-Msa said...

There was that problem in Mombasa some time. Every once in a while someone would dig up the beautiful pavements all over town and lay cables underground. A few weeks down the line after the pavements have been built back someone different would dig them up and lay their own cables. I always wondered, cant they gang up and dig up the town just once?

We need the pipe dreams Wanjiku. They're the ones that later become real dreams and then reality. With time.

Anonymous said...

The City Council/government/KDN/whoever do not see an open pavement/street they don't want to dig up in Nairobi, and lay some form of cable or the other.

You would think we have enough of those to last us enough but watch out the next time you are out, you may just fall into one, or see another being dug.

Pete R Njenga said...

If you go to Rironi in Limuru where the TV and radio masts for major broadcasters are, you'll be surprised at how ugly it looks.
I've always wondered why CCK cannot force these guys to use only two masts. Same goes for the GSM masts. Soon, the clutter that'll result from having four operators who cannot share masts and therefore reduce their operating costs, will be unbelievable.