Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Mauritius

Parabole and Canal Sat to merge in Mauritius

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I’ve just read an article describing negotiations between Parabole Réunion and Canal Sat Réunion on an eventual merging following the union of TPS and Canal Sat in France.

According to the article (which dates from July 2008), the merging discussions are going on and things will become clearer in September i.e. this month. This means that Parabole Réunion and Canal Sat Réunion might announce in a few weeks that they’ll have a combined satellite offer.

 

I’ve done a bit of research and I’ve found out that, in Réunion, Outremer-Télécom has started offering via ADSL a number of channels which are normally available through TNT in France. I’ve also read that one member of the CSA has said that TNT will be available throughout Réunion by 2010 at latest. I’m talking of the French TNT here with such channels as TF1, France2, France3, Canal+, Canal+ Cinema, Canal+ Sport, M6, TF6, W9, i Télé, Virgin 17, TPS Star and Eurosport. No wonder Parabole Réunion and Canal Sat Réunion are eager to merge with the sudden arrival of such formidable competitors.

Unfortunately, this does not mean that the same thing will happen in Mauritius between Parabole Maurice and Canal Sat Maurice. Here, we won’t have the French TNT channels (we do have TNT but nothing comparable with what is available in France.) So there is less pressure on Parabole Maurice and Canal Sat Maurice to merge.

Economy of scale?

But, I believe that if Parabole Réunion and Canal Sat Réunion merge then the same will have to happen here eventually. The reason is that there is only one satellite (Eutelsat W2) which broadcast TV signals to Mauritius, Réunion, Madagascar, Mayotte and Comoros. It would be costly to continue broadcasting Parabole and Canal Sat signals separately over Mauritius while people in Reunion get their own distinct combined signal. The market here is simply too small to justify the cost. According to some statistics, about 5-10% of Mauritian households have a satellite subscription and this is small compared to the situation in Reunion where 50% of the households have satellite TV (and I don’t think that percentage will grow a lot here because of the price of a satellite TV subscription.)

So there is a distinct possibility that we, Mauritians, will have a combined TPS (Parabole) / Canal Sat offer in a few months. Now, this might seem a step backwards as we’ll essentially have less choice. But there is one big consequence of all this merging which is…

High-definition TV

Plasma and LCD high-definition TVs are relatively common now in Mauritius. They are getting cheaper and cheaper and I can forecast a lot of them being sold in December because they are so, ahem, sexy. I was speaking to a Sony sales representative and he was telling me that, for the time being, people who bought high-definition TVs were not very happy because of the lack of HD content in Mauritius (I blogged on that last year.)

It seems that people in Réunion already have two HD channels: TF1 HD and Canal+ HD. This is not yet the case in Mauritius as far as I know. If we get the same offer as in Réunion, then it’s logical we’ll get the HD channels as well… if we are prepared to pay for them of course (Both HD channels cost €7 per month in Réunion i.e. Rs. 300)

Furthermore, if you look at the channels available in Parabole Maurice and Canal Sat Maurice, you’ll notice a lot of duplication. For instance, TF1, M6, TF6, RTL9, Antenne Réunion, Tempo, Kanal Austral, LCI and Eurosport (9 channels!) are available on both. Combining both satellite offers means that there will be no need to broadcast those 9 channels twice thereby saving a lot of bandwidth… which can then be used for additional HD channels.

My predictions

In 2009 at latest (and, maybe by the end of this year), we, Mauritians will get a combined Parabole / Canal Sat satellite offer with at least two HD channels (maybe more, say, Disney Cinemagic HD or National Geographic Channel HD.)

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Mind of an Entrepreneur

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While driving today, I had an interesting conversation with Christina about entrepreneurship… or, more precisely, the reasons why we opted to work in well-established companies when we returned to Mauritius in 1998 instead of founding our own start-up. We thought a little bit and came with the following theory:

When we were at school in Mauritius and, for the matter, in France, we didn’t have the chance to talk to entrepreneurs (we did not have family members or friends who were entrepreneurs.) The only professionals we regularly met were our teachers. Teachers, in general, have a very predictable life: same lectures, same colleagues, same kind of students, same office and (more or less) same salary year in year out. Teachers, in general, do not take too many risks as they do not want to move out of their comfort zones too much. In general, they are the exact opposites of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, assume significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome of setting up their own start-ups. The most successful ones change the world with their innovative products and services.

 

When we returned in 1998, Christina and I thought a lot about creating our own start-up but decided against it. In hindsight, we should have gone for it. Unfortunately, we still had a very distorted image of entrepreneurs at that time. Compared to our role models, teachers, we felt entrepreneurs took too many risks, had too many things to take care of and, well, were too different… We didn’t realize they took calculated risks, took care of many things they were passionate of and were different because their mind was the mind of an entrepreneur.

In 2008, I felt the need to (finally) become an entrepreneur. Two things prompted this, (1) the world of academia was losing its appeal to me and (2) some brilliant people I knew personally were quitting their jobs in big companies to join start-ups. Paul Graham, with his fantastic essays, also influenced me a lot.  

So, here I am, ten years after having returned to Mauritius, making a salutary change in my life: I am in the process of launching a company. Please stay tuned for more information.

 

[PS: Before you ask, immigration is still a possibility.]

Mauritians finally get good bandwidth…

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… on some selected websites but, of course, this is still an excellent news if one takes into account the pathetic bandwidth we had before.

Since a few weeks, some of us have noticed that some websites were very snappy and that downloads from them were much quicker than usual. I investigated and found out the following:

$ nslookup 
> server 202.123.2.6
Default server: 202.123.2.6
Address: 202.123.2.6#53
> www.intel.com
Server:		202.123.2.6
Address:	202.123.2.6#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.intel.com	canonical name = www.intel.com.edgesuite.net.
www.intel.com.edgesuite.net	canonical name = www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.
www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net	canonical name = www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.chinaredirector.akadns.net.
www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.chinaredirector.akadns.net	canonical name = a961.g.akamai.net.
Name:	a961.g.akamai.net
Address: 196.27.66.9
Name:	a961.g.akamai.net
Address: 196.27.66.8

 

Let’s see. www.intel.com which is, of course, the official website of Intel has an IP address of 196.27.66.8 or 196.27.66.9 when the Mauritius Telecom DNS server is queried. More interesting is the fact that those two IP addresses seem to correspond to one server owned by Akamai (i.e. a961.g.akamai.net) From the Akamai website, we read:

Akamai has created a digital operating environment for the Web. Our global platform of thousands of specially-equipped servers helps the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for rich, dynamic, and interactive content, transactions, and applications. When delivering on these requests, Akamai detects and avoids Internet problem spots and vulnerabilities, to ensure Websites perform optimally, media and software download flawlessly, and applications perform reliably.

Hundreds of enterprises worldwide use our global platform to sell, inform, entertain, market, advertise, deliver software, and conduct their business online.

I knew a company like Intel was an Akamai customer but this didn’t explain the increase in bandwidth in Mauritius. Something more interesting was going on. 196.27.66.8 and 196.27.66.9 looked familiar… Suddenly I understood. They looked like the dynamic IP addresses we have in Mauritius. Maybe 196.27.66.8 and 196.27.66.9 were in Mauritius which would easily explain everything.

I did:

$ whois 196.27.66.9

OrgName:    African Network Information Center
OrgID:      AFRINIC
Address:    03B3 - 3rd Floor - Ebene Cyber Tower
Address:    Cyber City
Address:    Ebene
Address:    Mauritius
City:       Ebene
StateProv:
PostalCode: 0001
Country:    MU

This is cool. It means that 196.27.66.9 is managed by the African Network Information Center, an organization based in Mauritius. To be 100% sure that 196.27.66.9 is really in Mauritius, I did:

$ traceroute 196.27.66.9
traceroute to 196.27.66.9 (196.27.66.9), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  41.212.192.1 (41.212.192.1)  72.663 ms  10.613 ms  11.346 ms
 3  ADSL-TPLUS-70-97.telecomplus.net (196.27.70.97)  10.627 ms  11.536 ms  11.003 ms
 4  ph-g1-1-1.1662.telecomplus.net (196.192.102.25)  10.251 ms  10.462 ms  11.510 ms
 5  196.27.66.9 (196.27.66.9)  11.108 ms  10.278 ms  10.987 ms

Phew! This is confirmation that a mirror of www.intel.com is, at least for us, Mauritians, found in Mauritius. Notice how 196.27.66.9 is just one hop from ph-g1-1-1.1662.telecomplus.net which belongs to Telecom Plus. Notice how all the IPs start with 196.

I wonder what other websites have already received the Akamai treatment…