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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (33462)	5/23/2010 4:20:51 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

Uganda Cable disupte update: When Did Huawei Lay the Right Cable? AllAfrica \| 12 May 2010 Kampala — IN a sudden twist of events, the parliamentary committee on information and communication technology (ICT) has given the Chinese firm, Huawei Technologies, a green light to complete the laying of the controversial [Ugandan] data transmission cable [cf #msg-26502914]. This change of heart comes hardly a month after the ICT watchdog, the National Information and Technology Authority (NITA), directed that the project is halted following local and international expert opinion that Huawei was laying the wrong cable. Nathan Nabeta, the committee chairperson's defence that the decision followed wide consultation and that Huawei was tasked to rectify the mistakes raises more questions than answers. First and foremost, the major concern was that the Chinese firm was laying a substandard cable, G652 instead of the superior G655 which would enable faster transmission of data and take care of future expansion. The big question is, when did Huawei replace the substandard cable? Cont.: allafrica.com -- fac: since I first posted about this story three weeks ago I've wondered if the main beef was technical or simply one of positioning; while it's true that G655 provides better bandwidthdistance product than G652, hence supports higher throughput while reducing the need for as many regeneration stations, I'm not convinced that this was the reason for the dustup, but who knows. Meanwhile, in Kenya and Rwanda, another type of problem has arisen (as also occurred in Nigeria, as well, see second story below) related to employees not being paid; could this have been a factor in the Ugandan case as well? See: -- Unpaid Staff Threaten to Vandalise Fibre Cables* Sheila Naturinda \| AllAfrica \| 14 May 2010 Kampala — About 7,000 workers who were hired to lay a high speed fibre optic internet cable from Kampala to Rwanda are threatening to destroy the cables over Shs200 million if they are not paid. The labourers are now unemployed following their lay-off by the 23 local companies that were subcontracted by Green Future to trench and lay the Shs16 billion fibre optic cable, belonging to Information Technology firms Kenya Data Network and Altech Stream. Workers not paid The companies claim they haven't received any pay from December 2009, saying they could go ahead and destroy the same cable if their financial needs are not met. The 23 companies have been forced to lay off workers without any payments, and the project has now been suspended. But Green Future's managing partner, Mr Felix Kabyanga told, Daily Monitor that while no money has been paid to any of the companies, about 3,000 casual labourers have been paid. "We expect to resume in May 29, and we shall pay all the companies." Work suspended He added that a financial crisis hit the project forcing work to halt after Kenya Data Network (KDN), the main contractor, incurred financial constraints due to cost and landscape oversights. He said "Together with our main contractor, KDN, we under-estimated the whole project, that is why we chose to suspend it." He said the cost of the cable cannot be only Shs16 billion because it has been realised that the Uganda landscape pattern is more expensive to trench. "By the time we launched, there were issues we under-looked like the terrain and we found that there were parts which had hard soils, others soft and others rock," Mr Kabyanga said. The stalled cable is meant to link networks of KDN in Kenya and Infocom an Internet Service Provider in Uganda, to Altech Stream's network in Rwanda. allafrica.com -- Nigeria: Nitel Workers Threaten to Cripple Telecoms Operations Sylvester Enoghase And Chibuzor Emejor \| AllAfrica \| 18 May 2010 Abuja/Lagos — On Tuesday, workers of Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its mobile subsidiary, Mtel, protested in Abuja and threatened to cripple telecoms operations countrywide over the non-payment of their salary for 25 months. Cont.: allafrica.com ------