RAO Services Benchmark for Arab Countries مقارنة عروض النفاذ المرجعية في البلدان العربية

Transcription

1 RAO Services Benchmark for Arab Countries مقارنة عروض النفاذ المرجعية في البلدان العربية TELECOMMUNICATIONS REGULATORY AUTHORITY (TRA), LEBANON January 2015

2 Table of Content I. Introduction II. III. IV. Regulatory Framework RAO Services Operational aspects V. Wholesale connectivity services in Ireland VI. Conclusion

3 The purpose of this project is to benchmark among Arab Countries, the different services that can be offered on NGN networks, their prices and terms and conditions as usually determined in the Reference Access Offer (RAO) issued by the incumbent operator With the uptake of new technologies and the ever increasing popularity of new bandwidth hungry services, countries are facing more and more an increase in the demand for national bandwidth to deliver the requested data to end users. As a result, nations/incumbent operators have been investing large amounts to develop and install national fiber optic networks as the backbone for national transmission. Considering the sunk costs invested to cover all the country, this kind of network is not usually replicated (except for redundancy purposes) but has a national target in terms of bandwidth capacity so that other operators can rent the needed capacity at wholesale prices. For a good and knowledgeable comparison, the benchmark has been divided in 3 main parts as listed below: 1- Regulatory Framework: this part tackles the main regulatory milestones along with the decision triggers. It aims at highlighting the main steps undertaken to liberalize data markets and the evolution stages of the benchmarked countries 2- RAO Services: this part tackles NGN services definition and differentiation parameters such as speed or other specific features 3-Operational Aspects: this part tackles the main components of the SLA such as time to respond, access to information, penalties, forecasts etc TRA Lebanon has launched the benchmark request among AREGNET members and only 5 countries have responded: Oman, Morocco, KSA, Sudan and Lebanon 3

4 Regulatory Framework: main regulatory milestones and decision triggers Morocco: Ministerial decision on LLU Lebanon: Signature of A MoU between public and private sector for partial LLU 2007 Oman: Implementation of LLU 2011 Oman: RAO issuance End Morocco: Implementation of Partial LLU KSA: Implementation of LLU & RAO issuance Lebanon: Launch of ADSL service for both public and private operators 2009 Sudan: Regulator decision to reduce national leased line prices Morocco: In Morocco, the information provided on the Regulatory Framework is limited to the Local Loop Unbundling. It started in 2006 with a Ministrer s decision and a partial unbundling in The full unbundling was expected to be operational by end of Nothing was mentioned about regulating access and wholesale services on NGN networks Oman: As for Morocco, the initial information provided was about Local Loop Unbundling (2009) and Interconnection regulation (2007). An additional document was sent about RAO services (2012) and their tariffs mentioning services like Leased Lines, colocation and Bitstream KSA: For KSA, the submitted information shows that they implemented the LLU in The Reference Offer for Data Access was also issued in 2007 and relates to services like Bitstream and Line Sharing Sudan: In April 2011, the Regulator in Sudan issues a decision to reduce national Leased Line prices based on LYRIC cost estimation of the national fiber optic network. The drop in price is staged over year 2011 Lebanon: In 2006, the Ministry of Telecommunications, and the private sector signed a MoU for partial Local Loop Unbundling. ADSL services were launched on November 2007 by the private and public sectors simultaneously 2012 Morocco: Expected full LLU 4

5 Main RAO components and connectivity services The table below displays the pricing information of submitted RAOs for bundled high capacity national connectivity: * Oman uses a specific pricing formula where the final price for 34Mbps and 155Mbps links can be derived by adding 2 Access fees and 1 Transport fee. The Access fee for short distance reflects a connection within the exchange premises while the Long distance reflects a connection up to 3km from the exchange ** Sudan s tariffs are per 100Km; for long distance links an estimation of 1000Km has been calculated to compare to the offers in KSA and Oman 5 Within exchange premises Set up Fee (USD/PPP) For comparable speeds, set up fees in Oman are much lower than in KSA For uncommitted monthly rental fees, KSA had the highest prices across the board. For 5 years commitment contracts KSA prices are 10% to 137% higher than in Oman It is worth noting that Oman offers commitment contracts of 24, 60, and 72 months while KSA proposes a minimum of 1 year, or 3 years or 5 years commitments. For KSA, the uncommitted monthly fees represented in the above table have been derived by dividing the yearly fee by 12. Sudan does not propose any discounted values for long periods For high speed connectivity, KSA and Oman offer very long distance links that can go up to 900 and 1000km Lebanon lacks bundled high speed offers Monthly Rental Fee (USD/PPP) Outside the exchange Uncommitted 5 years Oman KSA Sudan Lebanon Oman KSA Lebanon Oman KSA Oman KSA Long (<20Km) Short Long Short Long Short Short Long Short Long Short Long Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance Distance ** 64Kbps , , Kbps Mbps , Mbps ,000 1,955 1,975 4,939 3,021 6, ,758 4,396 2,266 4,844 34Mbps Access* - - 2, ,904 6, ,366 5, Mbps Transport - - 2, ,580 10, ,185 9, Mbps Access* - - 2,604 15,835-11,800 9, ,502 8, Mbps Transport - - 2,604 15,835-10,233 20,901 54, ,508 5,581 55, ,105 18,601 39,297 84,352 STM , , , , ,947

6 Benchmarking the 2Mbps national leased line service among the respondents shows that, overall, prices in KSA are the highest among benchmarked countries 2 Mbps national leased line (USD/PPP) 7, ,000 5, , , ,000 1, Set up Fee Short distance Uncommitted Long distance Uncommitted Short distance 5 years commitment Long distance 5 years commitment Oman KSA Sudan Lebanon Ireland (reference outside Arab Region) For uncommitted subscriptions, Lebanon s long distance prices are very competitive when compared to KSA, Oman and Sudan. For 5 years commitment contracts, prices in KSA are very close to the ones observed in Oman The 2Mbps leased line service is a legacy service in Ireland and they rank 3 rd among benchmarked countries 6

7 Benchmarking the bundled 155Mbps national link shows that prices in KSA are, the highest when compared to other countries 155 Mbps national connection (USD/PPP) 120, ,508 90,000 84,352 60,000 54,278 55,810 30,000 15,835 33,833 39,987 30,109 39,297 35,587 10, ,604 5,581 1,402 2,102 Set up Fee Short distance Uncommitted Long distance Uncommitted Short distance 5 years commitment Long distance 5 years commitment Oman KSA Sudan Ireland (reference outside the Arab Region) For 5 years commitment contracts and for short distance links, prices in KSA are very close to the ones observed in Oman. Sudan has very low prices for short distance uncommitted links For short distance links in Ireland, the selected option was the Wholesale Symmetrical Ethernet Access (Logical) Same Region Handover (Medium Density) Conveyance while for log distance links it was the Wholesale Symmetrical Ethernet Access (Logical) Different Regions Medium Density to Medium Density Conveyance The very low price levels observed in Ireland clearly show the market maturity in terms of available wholesale bandwidth offers than can go up to 10GB/s 7

8 Operational Aspects: main SLA components Service Level Agreement Forecasts Oman KSA Sudan Service availability 98-99%,which is the amount of time over one quarter Service Affecting fault: the repair time is 80-85% repaired within hours Non-service affecting fault: the repair time 80-85% within 36hours The service level is defined and agreed by parties in a separate Service level agreement No details are specified on the SLA regarding the monitoring hours, the time to respond and the committed service availability levels Depending on the service type, three types of forecasts can be requested from the customer (knowing that for high capacity orders, only capacity forecast are requested): 1. Traffic forecast 2. Capacity forecast 3. Customer forecast Forecasts are to be provided for a period of 4 quarters covering 1 year and delivered 10 working days before the start of the quarter Short term: OLO shall supply forecasts of the service by STC exchange site, to STC every six months on 1ST of December and 1ST of June of each year For long term it is 18 months For all corporate services: 24x7 fault reporting and monitoring 30 minutes response time Service availability level of 99.8% Customized as per negociation Penalties No penalties apply to the Operators for delays in service delivery Cancellation of orders by customer prior to the agreed delivery date is subject to a cancellation fee of 12.5% of the value of the order which is calculated as the sum of the first 6 months payment(s) STC will accept 15% variation of the forecast provided by OLO and STC has the right for compensation when the variation is exceeded N/A Note: Morocco did not provide any information on RAO services operational aspects and KSA information only showed Bitstream and Line Sharing services (No operational info on High Speed National connections) 8

9 Wholesale connectivity services available in Ireland: the market looks mature with offered speeds that go up to 10GB/s 9 Digital Wholesale Leased Lines (WLL) : Speed ranges from 9.6 Kb/s to 2Mb/s. Tariffs are per local end and include main link access charges, additional local loop charges and distance charges Wholesale Channelised Leased Lines : Speed ranges from 9.6 Kb/s to 2Mb/s. Tariffs are per local end and include main link access charges, additional local loop charges and distance charges Ethernet Aggregation Links : These links are of 100Mb/s. The fees are based on the aggregation link access length Uncontended Ethernet Access Circuits : Speed ranges from 512Kb/s to 10Mb/s. Fees are based on the local access length, the main link access length and the main link distance Contended Ethernet Access Circuits : Speed ranges from 512Kb/s to 10Mb/s. Fees are based on the local access, the main link access length and the main link distance Regional Ethernet Aggregation Links : These links are of 1000Mb/s. Tariff is based on an access fee and a distance fee per 100m Regional Ethernet Access Circuits : Speed ranges from 10Mb/s to 1000Mb/s. Tariffs are based on an access fee (premium or standard) and a distance fee per 100m Dublin Ethernet Aggregation Links : These links are of 1000Mb/s. Tariff is based on an access fee and a distance fee per 100m Dublin Ethernet Access Circuits : Speed ranges from 10Mb/s to 1000Mb/s. Tariffs are based on an access fee (premium or standard) and a distance fee per 100m Wholesale Ethernet Interconnect Link : Speed ranges from 1000Mb/s to 10Gb/s. Tariffs are based on density parameters (urban, provincial, rural) Wholesale Symmetrical Ethernet Access : Speed ranges from 10Mb/s to 10000Mb/s. Tariffs are based on the class of service, the handover point (in building, same node ) and the region density Wholesale Ethernet Interconnect Link : Speed ranges from 1000Mb/s or 10Gb/s. Tariffs are based on density parameters (urban, provincial, rural

10 Remarks Overall, the number of respondents to the questionnaire is very limited. We have missed the bulk of Arab countries that could have enriched this study by sharing their experience Among the 5 respondents, Morocco submitted information focused on the regulatory framework showing Implementation of unbundling access to the local loop. No high speed services, prices or SLA were submitted Oman, KSA and Sudan have provided information on bundled high speed connectivity services showing that, overall, KSA has the highest prices among the benchmarked countries On the SLA level, the documents provided by Oman show that the SLA contents are not predefined, and that the penalties apply only to the service demander in case of order cancellation. For Sudan, all Corporate services are equally treated with high service availability levels and quick response time. The information submitted by KSA is mainly about bitstream and line sharing services and do not mention high speed national connectivity services Finally, the Irish study case shows that the benchmarked countries still have margin to develop their wholesale connectivity offers in terms of capacity scale (up to 10Gb/s), the complexity and variety of the proposed services (Class of service, region density, point of interconnect) and in the refining of special offers for specific sensitive areas like the capital coverage 10