By David Birungi
Our neighborhoods are looking disorganized. Even before the fiber wires arrived, we were not well organised. We live on 50×100 plots with no back alleys, no utility ducts, no aesthetically pleasing architecture or comfortable physical land uses. It is not unusual to find a maize mill, a piggery farm or Deliverance church in the middle of what was supposed to be a quiet neighborhood.
Our built-up environment is a good reminder that the pursuit of private gain while socializing its costs is not sustainable. Mr. Anatoli Kamugisha and his Akright Estates, then at Impala building, tried to drill this into our social fabric but we ignored him.
At the turn of the millennium, two men in their late thirties and making their humble contribution to our country set all this in motion. One was a laid back, soft-spoken successful academic who could have been teaching to satisfy his desire to contribute to the knowledge factory.
He probably was using the Makerere address to domicile his various global research assignments. He drove the latest Toyota Exiv, how else would I profile him. He taught Economics 200, Consumer Theory. This was the largest economics class because it was compulsory, difficult and therefore had more people retaking the course.
Dr. Adam Mugume exposed us to the interesting behavior of consumers and how consumers make decisions. For example, from how many options does a consumer need to make the choice of an Internet Service Provider (ISP)? Two, three options? Or can he choose from the list of over 30 licensed ISPs? Can a liberal marketplace deliver private goods, like a dedicated 200mbps broadband connection to neighbors who have difficulty sharing a garbage skip, a road, or lighting up their access road?
The solution would be to share the indivisible, jointly consumed facilities such as roads, carrier-neutral internet networks, emergency rooms, and a quiet neighborhood. Dr. Mugume’s students, now development economists, have also proposed frameworks for infrastructure sharing which take me to the next gentleman, Mr. Patrick Kasulu.
Mr. Kasulu was an administrator at the same faculty as Dr. Mugume. He started Kasulu Property Masters, the merchants of 50ft x 100ft plots that gave many of us a chance to own property but without sharable amenities. We didn’t mind about the lack of utility ducts, the service alleys until the deadline for digital migration came in 2015. Suddenly a stable internet connection was very important in our homes.
The engineering for the delivery of that connection has evolved, become more consumer focused and easier to deploy. The engineers can easily collapse all those wires into 1–3 wires, bury them into one duct, if, and it’s a big if, the cost structures are agreed to by economists.
We are now here. Fiber wires in our faces, Dr. Mugume directing research at the Central Bank, Mr. Kasulu retired and quietly living on several 500x1000ft plots, and me writing about these great sons of Uganda. What will the former students of Economics 200 have to agree on?
On consumer choice. Is consumer choice limitless? In mobile telecoms, where data transmission is through radio frequency, the congestion is not in our faces. In fixed broadband, wires may be inevitable. The cost structure, property rights for wayleaves and easements are not engineering challenges. They will agree to support UEDCL to quickly resolve its current challenges and amend its license to be a carrier-neutral public infrastructure service provider.
The economists will also have to agree that open licensing of ISPs with the overriding objective of collecting hefty licence fees is a stretch idea. All the license holders would have to build networks to serve the customers.
The regulator, UCC, in a recent study, has indicated that the sector has delivered impressive economic good for the country, but the growth of the sector is being slowed down by a disjointed tax policy.
In the upcoming cities, some with planned international airports, if the economics makes sense, we have an opportunity to not make the same mistakes about consumer choices. Posterity is still on our side.
