One of the hallmarks of a healthy democracy is our right – and our responsibility – to question every aspect of our national institutions. If the political dialogue over the last few years is any indication, Vanuatu’s democracy is alive and kicking.

Kalkot Mataskelekele’s adult life has been devoted to promoting and defining an independent, democratic Vanuatu. The nation has benefited from his consistency, wisdom and guidance. He has long been a public proponent of a US-style system with a clear division of power between legislative and executive branches of government. He has been joined by others in suggesting that factionalism could be addressed by putting limits on the number of political parties.

Mataskelekele is one of many leaders who have remarked on numerous occasions that we should not take the structures of government for granted. He rightly points out that Vanuatu’s Westminster system was created mostly as a sop to its departing colonial masters seeking reassurance that the nascent democracy would remain recognisable to them.

In the rush to create a new constitution, important aspects of Vanuatu culture were overlooked. The consensus-driven style of leadership-from-within that typifies chiefly rule is difficult to reconcile with majority rule and a codified, winner-take-all legal system.

Most difficult of all are the contending principles of public service and entitlement.

The no-confidence motion currently pending in Parliament is yet another symptom of a sense of entitlement that subverts stability and erodes the ability of the Opposition to perform its appointed task.

No one questions Harry Iauko’s contribution to the VP, nor the mandate handed him by his record 1600-plus supporters. But it doesn’t logically follow that he automatically merits a cabinet position. The public interest is only served when cabinet positions are filled by those most able to serve.

The tiff between Iauko and party leader Edward Nipake Natapei has crossed the line from intra-party rancour to a crisis in governance. Surely there are other mechanisms to resolve this issue than bringing about the downfall of the government?

A congenital weakness in Vanuatu politics is the lack of real opposition. In most parliamentary democracies, the term ‘loyal Opposition’ is more than just a pleasant bromide, serving only to placate the loser. It’s an effective reminder that policies must be publicly, thoroughly and constructively scrutinised and critiqued. The give-and-take of parliamentary debate is the most valuable service MPs can render their constituents.

In Vanuatu, however, there is little if any critical evaluation of policy and legislation. Rather than accepting the implicit legitimacy of the ruling coalition and performing the integral public service of scrutinising its every action, the Opposition fritters away its political capital in a petty game of parliamentary musical chairs.

This stems from a system of debt and obligation that lies at the heart of Vanuatu culture. A man’s stature is often directly proportional to his ability to deliver wealth and bounty to his family and his village. Gifts of food, pigs, mats and other symbols of wealth lie at the centre of most ceremonies. But, as with so many other aspects of kastom, pigs and mats do not translate directly into western-style government.

Moana Carcasses Kalosil (ironically, a supporter of this latest motion) said in a pre-election debate that a cabinet position should mean more than 17 jobs for one’s supporters. Indeed it should. It seems, though, that the wisdom of his words remains lost on MPs on both sides of the floor.

As long as every politician’s main objective is to get his ‘fair share’ of the spoils, the guidance of our elder statesmen serves no purpose. The US, for example, has learned in the most vivid terms that even their vaunted democratic mechanisms can be subverted by greed. Regardless of the number of parties, the division of powers or the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives, the popular will is sapped by an anemic culture of government.

Instilling a sense of duty and purpose into politicians is not a simple process. Significant effort has been invested in recent years to bolster the civil service, making it more resistant to the worst aspects of this venal approach to governance. It’s taken years to make even tenuous gains, but Vanuatu’s rapidly improving stature in the Pacific community is testament to its success.

We need to begin the same process in politics.

We need to find a way to express – not just to politicians, but to the electorate as well – that everyone benefits more from the application of a principled, patient and indirect approach to good governance than they do from short-sighted, paternalistic vote-buying and nepotism. Only then can we begin a productive dialogue on how best to integrate the best aspects of kastom with the tools of western democracy.

I often feel a rush of vicarious shame when I contrast the insights of leaders like Mataskelekele with the actions of some of Vanuatu’s elected representatives. His vision of democracy and its role in society is far in advance of current practice.

My fervent hope is that one day soon the state will deserve a president as good as this.

It’s axiomatic that in our so-called Information Society, improving communications is synonymous with improving people’s quality of life. Easier access to information is generally accepted as a good thing.

Far be it from me to gainsay the truisms that keep me in pocket money. But I do enjoy being wrong.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my time here in Vanuatu is that trends and patterns are not so universal as they sometimes seem. Things that are self-evident elsewhere in the world should not be taken for granted here. Society, geography, economy and a few dozen other differentiating factors make Vanuatu unique in important ways.

Received wisdom, even from the leading lights of development theory, often does more damage than good if it’s not leavened with a solid grounding in local conditions. And that’s why I’ve been waiting with bated breath for an upcoming report by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PiPP) on the social effects of mobile telephony in Vanuatu.

The report, scheduled for release next month, runs over 120 pages. It’s a thorough investigation of the impact of the telecoms market liberalisation policy on households throughout Vanuatu. In the weeks ahead, we’ll look at it in more detail. This week’s column, though, investigates a single incidental datum that, I confess, I completely misjudged.

In the months leading up to Digicel’s roll-out, I confided to my friends that I was worried they would eat TVL alive. Their aggressive approach in other markets looked like it would be devastating when unleashed on what appeared at the time to be a rather complacent incumbent.

It appears that I got that prediction wrong. A survey of households shortly after the roll-out shows an overwhelming majority of rural users with Digicel accounts, while the exact opposite is true in our urban centres. The sampling, while geographically limited, is large enough to be statistically significant, as we wonks like to say.

These numbers date from shortly after Digicel first turned on its service. It’s entirely possible that the ratio has changed since then. But given that both companies have been tight-lipped so far with regards to their sales or usage levels, this is the best objective data we have to judge them by. (Neither Digicel nor TVL responded to requests for comment on this story.)

That Digicel would dominate the rural population comes as no surprise. Their more extensive network gives them an effective monopoly in many parts of the country. But even in rural areas where TVL had established a foothold prior to Digicel’s arrival on the scene, the survey showed a preponderance of Digicel customers. Anecdotal evidence from north Efate seems to support the perception that Digicel’s comprehensive coverage made them a more compelling choice for rural customers.

So what, if anything, went wrong in Vila and Santo? Why don’t customers appear to have flocked en masse to Digicel? Well, some part of it may be due to a psychological phenomenon known as ‘loss aversion’. Briefly stated, loss aversion theory states that losses are twice as powerful as gains, in psychological terms. So either Digicel would have had to find a way to make people see them as vastly better than the existing alternative, or Telecom would have had to do something make themselves look far worse.

In other words, TVL benefited from their status as ‘the devil you know.’

But more than that, TVL’s marketing campaign was clear and focused. They matched Digicel’s mobile service offering nearly feature for feature and closely aligned their prices. Having secured their urban base from mass defections, TVL have since increased their rural coverage, apparently in an attempt to bring the game to Digicel’s half of the field, as it were.

Cable and Wireless, one of TVL’s parent companies, seems to have learned valuable lessons from its Vanuatu turf war. It’s already taking steps in other vulnerable markets to ensure that Digicel doesn’t find a way to differentiate itself from the incumbent. In the Solomon Islands, Our Telekom (the monopoly carrier) has changed its corporate colour to a primary red, virtually indistinguishable from the same crimson tide that Digicel splashed all over Vanuatu when they debuted here.

Of course, mobile subscription is not an either/or proposition. A significant minority of the urban survey sample stated that they had SIM cards for both providers. They used their Digicel card to reach their family in the islands, and their TVL card to reach people in town.

(Full disclosure: I use both services, too. In fact, I went shopping for a dual-SIM mobile last weekend.)

So do we chock this up as a win, loss or tie for the upstart Digicel? Without more recent – and more detailed – data, it’s hard to tell. We can safely say, though, it seems clear now that fears of TVL’s imminent demise were somewhat exaggerated.

Indeed, there’s every possibility that TVL is doing just as well as before, and perhaps a little better. In their rush to get things started, Digicel was quite accommodating on the terms of their interconnect fees with TVL – perhaps more than they needed to be. Now that the pool of callers has increased so much, their urban customers’ fidelity, combined with their continued monopoly in land lines, could mean that they’re seeing greater call volumes and revenue than ever before.

It’s entirely possible that things have changed since this survey was conducted. But even if the landscape has altered somewhat, I suspect that the larger features remain intact.

And that would be good news indeed. I’ve stated before that the best outcome for consumers in this liberalised market is a knock-down, drag-out fight in which both companies battle for every inch of turf, but neither gains a decisive advantage. We can’t afford to allow complacency to re-enter the picture. We want both companies to keep prices low; we want each to anticipate the other’s moves and to keep the game as close and competitive as possible.

TVL, Digicel and a few others are gearing up right now for the next round in the liberalisation game. Before too very long, we’ll see Internet services thrown into the mix. If the patterns that we’ve seen from the early days of mobile competition hold true there, we’ll see real benefits for the country.

Each of the new entrants into the market is going to have to work harder than ever to set themselves apart from the others. TVL has shown that it’s capable of getting the lead out and duking it out toe-to-toe with one of the fiercest and best-resourced challengers in the telecom world. It will be interesting to see how they fare in a more fluid scenario, with multiple players all manoeuvring for the dominant position.

Where Internet is concerned, most of the competition will happen on TVL’s turf. If experience in the mobile arena is any indication, it won’t be sufficient to bring the cost of switching close to zero; the challengers will have to provide a compelling reason for people to change providers. Assuming that Telecom is capable of pulling its socks up to the same extent that they have in the mobile arena, the newcomers are going to have to find some very creative solutions indeed to set themselves apart from the crowd.

At a dinner party recently, I met a lovely young couple. Newly arrived in Vanuatu, I started into my standard ‘welcome to Vanuatu’ spiel, illustrating the many interesting ways Vanuatu differs from Westernised countries.

As always, there are things we forget to mention. After a few years living here, one begins to take for granted any number of Vanuatu’s mundane peculiarities. Here, for posterity’s sake, is a brief listing of things you need to know, but don’t get mentioned in the tourist literature….

• Roosters sleep from sundown till 9:00 at night, then start crowing again. One rooster will start it, waking up and fluffing out his feathers before letting loose. This wakes up the nearest neightbour, typically in the next yard, and he lets loose, a little more vehemently, in order to disabuse any nocturnal hens of the impression that Junior next door is worth the visit.
• The roosters wake up the dogs, who follow more or less the same modus operandi, modulo the fluffing out of feathers.
• Take off your shoes before you go inside, or onto someone’s porch.
• Slow down. No really. You’ll go crazy if you don’t. Walk slower. No, slower than that. Take your time.
  You might have to wait 60 seconds for someone to answer a question. It feels awkward at first, but just wait.
• Cars and trucks will regularly slow down to chat with passing pedestrians, or just crawl along because… well, because. You’re not in a hurry (trust me, you’re really not, no matter what), so relax and enjoy the ride.
• People will stare. It’s okay, they stare at everyone and everything. Feel free to stare back. Just remember to smile and say hello when your eyes meet.
• People will talk about you in the third person when you’re standing right there. Don’t take offense; it’s a sign of respect, actually. They don’t want to start talking to you until you’ve made it clear that they’re welcome to do so. Allow someone else to speak on your behalf for the first few minutes.
• The first thing anyone will ask is whether you’re married and do you have children. If you’re with a friend of the opposite sex, the assumption will probably be that you two are at least shacked up, if not planning to marry in the near future.
• People will listen to everything you say, whether it’s directed at them or not. Fair is fair, though; you get to do the same. Be inquisitive. Don’t be afraid to ask silly questions to total strangers.
• People will assume that you are not capable of lifting anything heavier than a shell of kava, and will often interpose themselves physically if you try, for example, to carry your own backpack.
• Just because someone’s not looking at you doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention. Believe me, they are. More attention than you or I might pay.
• Shake out your clothes, your towel and your shoes (if they’re close-toed) before using them. You only need one centipede bite to learn this lesson.
• ‘Afternoon’ means ‘evening’, specifically around sunset. When someone invites you to go somewhere in the afternoon, do not ask what time. If they mean anything other than between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., they will specify.
• ‘Afternoon’ is as precise as anyone ever gets. If you request a meeting at, say, 3:25 or 4:15, people will wait till you’re gone and then laugh at you.
• People will continue wishing you a good morning until about 1:00 p.m. It’s not weird.
• Unless you’re Canadian, learn to say ‘Sorry’ when you interrupt, pass in front of someone, bump into a lamp post, get stung by a bee, see someone stumble on the other side of the road – you name it. (If you’re Canadian, you already do this.)
• Don’t pass in front of someone if you can avoid it. Never step between two people talking to one another unless there is no other option. (And waiting 20 minutes for them to finish talking is an option.) Say sorry and duck under their gaze if you reasonably can, even if it means bending double.
• Conversely, get out of the way. That person standing 20 metres away, staring off into nothingness, is waiting for you to get out of the doorway so they can go inside.
• Make smiling your default reaction. You can’t smile too much. Really. It’s unnerving at first to see someone smile and laugh softly when they announce that their house has burned down or that a family member is dead, but… well, it happens.
• Reread that last point. I’m not exaggerating.
• Just because nobody is talking doesn’t mean there’s no conversation going on. People can speak volumes with a simple wave of the hand. Learn how it’s done, because it’s fascinating and enlightening.
• Quiet down. No matter how quiet you think you are, you’re talking too loudly.
• Shake hands with everyone. People are going to hold your hand far longer than you’re comfortable with. Get used to it.
• Learn the ‘finger snap’ handshake. It’s the coolest handshake in the world.

Recently we’ve seen a bit of a lull in activity (or at least excitement) in the Vanuatu telecommunications sector. Customers are becoming a little blasé about choice in the mobile market. The mobile telephone incumbents have more or less established their positions, with TVL making real efforts to smoothe its complexion and Digicel allowing the first small warts to peep through its make-up.

The post-election transition of power slowed the policy process down some, and movements at the executive level meant that some of the local businesses needed a bit of a breather as well.

So let’s take this opportunity to do a little crystal ball gazing. What can businesses and Internet users generally expect in the coming months?

Available evidence seems to point to an upcoming spike in activity among new and existing service providers as they attempt to establish a sustainable long-term position in the nascent ISP market. All eyes are going to be on the numbers, and the numbers will be in the household market. I expect to see a rather boisterous, slightly confused, slightly messy marketing and advertising blitz as a few new faces join our now-familiar cast of communications characters in a bid to be first in the hearts of Vanuatu consumers.

It’s almost certain that we’ll see price reductions, accompanied by a significant increase in available satellite bandwidth. If Digicel were to make their full capacity available, for example, we’d see national capacity more than double.

As usual, Telecom is playing the bellwether role. Its pride of place in the market allows it to anticipate others’ moves. In mid-October, it slashed Internet prices by as 65% and doubled its Internet capacity.

(I cannot forebear from observing how far we’ve come from the days when past management of TVL obstreperously opposed the government’s suggestion that they increase their satellite capacity beyond the few paltry megabits the nation had at the time. My, how times have changed.)

Caveat Emptor: Price is not the only thing to consider when choosing your ISP.

It’s reasonable to expect that there’s further room for price cuts. Depending on how thinly the providers are available to slice and dice their international connections, we could see prices fall significantly. More importantly, though, I strongly suspect we’ll see what appear to be much more generous business and personal Internet packages, offering ‘up to’ 5 megabits or more per account.

Note that I say ‘appear to be’ and ‘up to’. All of our Internet connections here in Vanuatu come via satellite, and satellite is inherently expensive. Commissioning a communications satellite requires an investment of tens of millions of US dollars at a minimum, and that money has to be recouped somehow. While it’s possible that the international economic slowdown might have some small downward effect on bandwidth prices, there’s a pretty hard limit to how low they can go.

Until we finally accumulate the political and business capital to invest in a fibre-optic link, Internet services in Vanuatu will continue to operate as an economy of scarcity.

This means that anyone moving into the ISP market is going to have to maintain a fine balance between aggressively consumer-friendly prices and a relatively high operating overhead. The easiest way to accomplish this is to perform a little bit of sleight of hand.

Increasing the level of contention is one tactic. In layman’s terms, contention refers to the number of people who share each actual bit of bandwidth. Think of bandwidth as the number of checkout lines at the supermarket, and contention as the number of people in each individual queue.

It’s normal for ISPs around the world to use about a 10:1 ratio of contended to un-contended bandwidth, meaning that they’ll sell roughly 10 megabits for each actual megabit they have. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Unless you’re downloading non-stop, 24 hours a day, you don’t need that whole megabit to yourself. That 10:1 ‘magic’ ratio has been proven over time to be a realistic compromise between service availability and affordability.

But consider this: The best commercial rate I’ve seen in the Pacific for un-contended (or ‘pure’) bandwidth in only slightly less than 400,000 vatu per megabit. Divide that by ten and you get a monthly cost per user of about 40,000 vatu – hardly an attractive price for the average Internet consumer.

There’s no doubt that some of the bigger fish in our little pond will get much better prices than I’ve quoted here. But the fact remains that in order to get monthly prices for flat-rate Internet down to a level that appeals to consumers locally, providers will have to accept a contention ratio far closer to 20:1. Some might be tempted to surpass even that number in order to appear more attractive.

Beware as well of ISPs that have ridiculously low introductory prices, but only for ‘capped’ services. A capped service is one in which a base amount of bandwidth is offered very cheaply, but going over the limit results in extremely high charges. Back in the bad old days when this was the only service available in Vanuatu, I heard stories of unwitting individuals being billed hundreds of thousands (millions, in one lamentable case) of vatu per month.

There’s almost certainly going to be a lot of jostling – and possibly a little flim-flam – as new ISPs roll out their services. We’ll compare and contrast the respective offerings in future columns as the new services roll out.

There’s probably more room in the Internet market than many – if not most – of the would-be competitors realise right now. It’s reasonable to assume that the Internet market here will resemble the early days of Internet elsewhere in the world, before the big players finally managed to consolidate their hold.

I will be watching with special interest for the innovations provided by smaller ‘mom-and-pop’ operations. While others fight for pride of place and name recognition, we will inevitably see a few niche operators offering tailored services to particular segments of the market. The bigger operators will inevitably appropriate the best innovations, but in the first year or two, the best deals will be found among the smaller players.

How soon will all this happen? Sources have told me informally that we can expect to see new ISP license applications coming within the next few months, approvals shortly thereafter. The licensing regime has been designed such that it’s not bound to ongoing legislative revamp currently underway, likely to be tabled in April’s parliamentary session.

It’s no secret that all the prospective entrants are champing at the bit, so we can expect them to hit the ground running. As long as our political leaders keep a steady hand on the tiller (and out of the cookie jar), 2009 should prove just as interesting as 2008 was.

I expect that, by the end of next year, Vanuatu’s telecommunications scene will once again have changed fundamentally.

Not My Problem.

There is a time-honoured tradition here in Vanuatu, requiring that nobody get too fussed over anything. It requires as well that one think twice about the inevitable repercussions before taking ownership of anything. Whether it’s for an item or an idea, a report or a plan, taking responsibility is nearly always a liability.

There are good reasons for all this, to be sure. The only way for a group to survive in a small village – on an island, to boot – is to get along. Learning to keep one’s head down, even when silence comes at a price, ensures harmony. Being quick to forgive weakness and slow to confront ineptitude has become one of the hallmarks of Vanuatu society.

But this is the single biggest impediment facing IT service delivery in Vanuatu today.

I’m a firm believer in community, especially as it’s practiced here in Vanuatu. I respect and admire people’s ability to work cooperatively. On the roughly sixty occasions I’ve stepped into the IT pulpit here in the Independent, I’ve always tried to avoid behaving in a way that would cause any individual or organisation to lose face.

Today I’m going to make an exception.

I do so for two reasons. Firstly, I’m simply tired. After five years of work at the grassroots level, I’m starting to become impatient with the institutional weaknesses I see. We can’t go further until we start to address them.

My second reason is somewhat more optimistic in nature: I feel that the IT community has become quite strong; it’s matured enough by now that we can constructively engage on this issue. So here goes….

The standard to which all ICT-based businesses operate is far too low. At the core of it is the feeling – often subconscious, always unspoken – that we somehow can’t or even shouldn’t expect things here to be as solid, as efficient or as robust as elsewhere in the world. While a degree of realism is always called for, it seems to me that this point of view is being used more to excuse our weaknesses than to explain our environment.

We can’t change our environment, but we sure as heck can work on our weaknesses, and it’s high time we did.

I find it nearly incomprehensible that a telephone company can’t organise itself to answer the phone. It would be ironic if it wasn’t so painful, but I can’t count the number of times in the last three months alone that I and others have rung through to TVL, only to be told, ‘Sorry, there’s nobody in the office right now.’

I’m the last one to put myself on a pedestal (as you’ll see shortly) but for heaven’s sake, when I helped to set up the first commercial ISP in the Eastern Arctic, our team of four part-time geeks always answered the phone, no matter the time or the day of the week. And we always called back. Every time.

With consumer-grade equipment and a piddling budget, in an environment that makes Vanuatu look like (heh) Paradise, we kept our little operation running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I’m not asking for (or expecting) perfection, but how hard can it really be to answer the darn phone, to forward it to a mobile if the person is not at their desk? This is the telephone company, for crying out loud.

And lest Digicel start giggling in delight at seeing their competition pilloried in print, let me add that they hardly blameless in this regard. In the past weeks there have been dozens of complaints on the VIGNET mailing list about their inability to answer the phone, to follow up with their customers.

Digicel’s customer service system is fully computerised, and there’s a huge LED display on the wall showing call queue sizes and wait times. And in spite of all that, they still manage to leave their customers fuming, their problems unresolved.

VITUS has tried on a number of occasions to engage with Digicel, to start a constructive dialogue. In spite of a few positive signs at the start, this has never really happened. Tanya Menzies, the new General Manager, is from Jamaica, and we earnestly hope that her life experience there, along with prior experience of life in the Pacific, will have shown her the importance of engaging with the community.

We remain hopeful but impatient in this regard.

And a mea culpa: The private sector is no better. I’ve been ashamed on more than one occasion to have to apologise to a customer for not resolving simple issues sooner. I’ve had to deal with innumerable cases where equipment doesn’t arrive on time, where instructions from the client are ignored or selectively remembered.

I watch customers perform a sort of dance of despair as they move from one service provider to the next, hoping each time that they’ll finally get predictable, quality service. It gives me little satisfaction to see them come back to me chastened but still hopeful that somehow things have changed for the better in their absence.

I have spent the last two years working side by side with one of the few truly successful ni-Vanuatu entrepreneurs in this country. Joseph Tamata built CNS Ltd. quite literally from nothing. He’s dealt with skeptical banks and suppliers, customers who couldn’t believe that a ni-Vanuatu business could provide the services they wanted. He’s proven them all wrong.

Every day, I see the effort he exerts to try to improve his business. He invests in his staff, he fosters the best and brightest young IT talent in the country, and asks for only professionalism in return. To their credit, the majority of his staff do their best every day to live up to his expectations. But the number of times I’ve seen him disappointed in this regard is shocking.

Just as I stated at the outset, the problem is clear: Taking responsibility for a client, for a task – and especially for a crisis – seems to be beyond the capacity of the majority of people here. Petty jealousy, gossip and a propensity to blame the messenger make it dangerous to accept responsibility for anything.

In fairness, in many cases the customer is equally to blame. It’s far easier to blame the person fixing the machine for the problem than it is to accept that the source of the problem may be sitting in front of the computer.

Your computer needs regular service, just like a car. If you only call a technician when there’s a crisis, then any inefficiencies the technician introduces into the situation only compound the issue. But that doesn’t mean the technician caused the crisis.

All of us, ni-Vanuatu and expat alike, fall into this trap. I want to despair sometimes of the ease with which people slide into a cycle of externalising their problems, sitting back and waiting for someone else to come and fix them.

There are no easy answers to this problem, but I refuse to believe it’s as intransigent as some would have it. The problem is simple, but not easy. And so is the answer.

A wise man once said that, when you’re faced with a problem, consider all the courses of action, weighing the difficulty of each one. Chances are, the right choice is the one that feels the hardest.

Answer the phone. Own your work. Stop passing the buck. The problem won’t go away on its own. But if you apply a little elbow grease, you’ll find that maybe, just maybe, the problem won’t come back.

Most importantly, you’ll find that you have an ally on the other end of the line.