WHY A SINGLE INTERNET/TELECOMS GATEWAY IS A BAD IDEA:

Recently there has been news that a single internet/telecom gateway (SIG, which
will be liberally used as a noun throughout this article) is being proposed for
Namibia by our government. This article will explore the notion of a gateway
and its pros and cons.

How Gateways Work:

Let us briefly examine how Namibia’s voice/data communication networks

interact with the global community. We communicate domestically and with
entities outside of Namibia’s border largely through the following means:

 Phone calls,
 Emails,
 WhatsApp messages & calls,
 Skype calls,
 Any other video chats/calls and
 Internet browsing data (Facebook, watching movies online, Google
searches etc.)

Most of us are familiar with the fact that to access these services and to start
doing any of the above-mentioned things as an action, you would need a relevant
device (e.g. computer, cellphone/smartphone) and a contract with a Telecoms
operator (Pre-paid SIM card or contract based agreement). But let us briefly
focus on what happens when you are on the receiving end of one or several of
the above methods of communication.

Let us say somebody is calling your Telecom 085 number from Zimbabwe on a
mobile phone that has a SIM card issued by their 2nd largest network which is
called Telecel. How does that phone call reach you when Telecel does not have a
direct cable link or agreement with Telecom Namibia to access each other’s
networks?

Enter the gateway. Think of a gateway as a security door to a communication

network, much like the security apparatus when you enter the lobby of an office
building; you will need to have a good reason to get into the offices and even
then, you must meet and follow the security protocol set by the office to actually
get in (e.g. no weapons, dress code etc.). Similarly, gateways provide a point of
interface into a network with certain technical protocols that must be met if
voice/data information is to flow into or out of said network.

Telecoms tend to operate their own gateways but there are also non-telecom
gateway operators that provide the service of connecting global networks to one
another, thereby allowing users of networks in one country to communicate with
user of a network in another.

With the above in mind, the scenario follows that the call originating from
Zimbabwe is routed from Telecel’s gateway to a ‘global switching gateway’, a
non-telecom gateway operator as described, which then attempts to find the
fastest and cheapest route between the vast global networks to relay the call to
Telecom Namibia’s gateway so that you may receive it. If, for example, the fastest
way happens to be through a Telecom in Japan because the US/Yen exchange
rate favors the cost of this route at that specific moment in date and time, then
that is how that call will be routed. Starting in Zimbabwe, going to Japan and
ending up in Namibia.

You may also imagine the opposite of this example, where you are initiating the
call, a query on the Internet or sending a WhatsApp message; the data travels out
from your device to its recipient in much the same way.

In a streamlined nutshell, this is in fact the model agreed to between the

Communications Regulatory Association of Namibia (CRAN) and our 3 national
telecoms operators MTC Namibia, Telecom Namibia and Paratus Telecom so that
they may deliver their services to us. This model allows for our telecoms to
attempt at delivering the most competitive pricing for sending and receiving
voice/data communications into and out of Namibia for their customers. This
model also has the added benefit of providing a certain level of redundancy for
Namibian communications, as there are multiple points of connection within the
country between telecoms and to the outside world. If, for example, Telecom
Namibia’s gateway went under during a national disaster such as an severe
earthquake or flooding, MTC’s and Paratus Telecom’s gateways would be able to
pick up some of the slack and allow for the life and death flow of vital
communication channels to stay open.

Why an SIG? :

A Single Internet/Telecoms Gateway would theoretically force all voice/data

communications in Namibia through a single gateway effectively making it a
choke point and will stifle competitiveness since one company will set the price
of how voice/data communications are sent into and out of Namibia. The
company that would set up the SIG would become the de-facto telecom
monopoly in Namibia as all current telecoms will have to pay for and use its
gateway for access to the outside world.

If an SIG was established, it would likely become an SOE or something similar as,
by nature, it reports to and is directed by government. Its announcement would
most likely have an immediate negative effect on Namibia’s status with global
competitiveness watchdogs. Considering the cost of the technology involved, it
would easily run into the billions of Namibia dollars to initially set up and
maintain every year. The Namibian taxpayer will for a great part most likely
burden this cost.

Why might an SIG be needed? There are not many reasons that warrant an SIG
(as evidenced by the fact that only Laos, Cuba, Sierra Leone and Venezuela have
one set up) and, in many ways the very idea itself is obsolete, but let us attempt
to examine a few.
  Reason 1: A government might have economic concerns about tracking
usage of its telecoms networks more accurately to ensure correct
reporting and management of revenue as, theoretically, they would be
able to observe all communications streams in a country with an SIG.
Telecoms voice call revenue has, in the past, traditionally been a key
addition to the coffers of governments around the world although
currently evolving technologies in how data/voice services are delivered
and monitored have drastically lowered the margins of these streams in
the past two decades for every nation.

It is much cheaper for a telecom to send and receive its voice call traffic over the
Internet than to use the older copper telephony network or other physical cable
lines that, usually being part of a nations infrastructure, would be rented out to
telecoms at cost. In order to maximize their own profits, a telecoms operator
might lease access to a cheaper internet based gateway or ‘grey route’ to route
their voice call traffic instead of using the national infrastructure built by a
government meaning less revenue for said government. In such cases,
governments might use the SIG to keep a closer eye on the telecoms to ensure
they are playing by whatever rules and policies that may have been established
but it is worth noting that there is no evidence of this issue being a major
problem in Namibia at all.

 Reason 2: To enable for the surveillance of citizenry and inhabitants, the

ability to restrict access to certain voice/data communications channels
and content on the basis of national security and to have an ‘off/on kill-
switch’ for the internet/telephony networks nationwide.

Both of these reasons have severe policy and technologically related setbacks in
being valid, as communications technology is rapidly changing how and what we
connect to electronic communications networks. There are fairly advanced
technological trends that have yet to reach Namibia’s shores that will drastically
change the world over the next 20 years such as the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT)
that is looking to connect even everyday mundane household objects such as
your underwear to the Internet.

We should note that of the countries listed, where an SIG is installed, given their
known models of governance, the 2nd reason is most likely their motivation for
installation. Other countries including Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia and
others instead of employing an SIG, use other methods such as simply directing
their telecoms to restrict access to or shut down data/voice services.

For the first reason where a government is concerned about telecoms revenue
management and is looking to bolster earnings, the very idea of an SIG is self-
defeating as if one were to actually be implemented; telecoms will have their
hands tied in their ability to obtain best pricing for accessing global gateways as
the price will be artificially fixed by the company that installs the SIG.
There is no tenable position that can maintain that the cost to our national
telecoms to access global gateways would not increase in this situation. This
means they will have less ability to provide flexible pricing on their products (e.g.
Aweh and Jiva, costs of calls per minute) as they only have one gateway supplier.
Such a situation would likely to lead to pricing and regulatory issues of the kind
which are currently prompting Sierra Leone to liberalize and deregulate it’s own
single telecoms gateway.

Another major drawback is that as global communication technology permeates

deeper into human societies, given the explosive global democratization of
communication technology over the last 40 years, it is highly unlikely that
telecoms and governments will be the sole purveyors of communication enabling
platforms and technology in the very near future. For example Google and
Facebook have both invested hundreds of millions in USD into research on
ambitious projects to globally beam Internet access down from high-altitude
weather balloons and a global network of drones, respectively. Successful pilot
projects have already been conducted in many parts of the world and there is
nothing to suggest that these projects will not be actively deployed in many parts
of the world, including here in Namibia, in less than 2-3 years.

Given that there is currently no international agreement on the vertical extent of

sovereign national airspace (e.g. how far up in the sky does the reach of
Namibian law go?), in the event when Google and Facebook inform their users
that they can receive free Wi-Fi beamed down from drones and balloons flying in
the stratosphere, the proposed SIG starts to look very futile indeed as that would
practically turn everyone’s devices, be it a smartphone or computer, into a
gateway over which a proposed SIG will have no control or ability to monitor. In
such an event, it is very hard to imagine Namibian or any other national
authorities having any control over people’s preference to access their
voice/data services for free or by preferred method.

Let us now examine the second reason for installing a SIG, national security
concerns. One might easily think of China as an example of a single gateway
country but that would be factually incorrect. Rather than funneling all
voice/data communication through a single gateway, China uses a complex set of
monitoring tools and devices to survey it’s network traffic and control access to
voice/data content as they see fit at their 7-8 estimated international gateways.
China does not only posses the ability to manufacture the relevant technical
components that allow for a complex system of voice/data communications
access control but also the human expertise to somewhat counter new system
security lapses caused by new developments in technology. With its population
of over a billion people, it is easy to imagine that social cohesion is a major factor
in how the Chinese government rationalizes controlling global voice/data
communication network access to its population. It would be hard though to
argue for such a position in Namibia.

It would also be untenable to imply that there is a relevant immediate existential

threat to the national stability of Namibia, and even then it’s more doubtful that
such a threat can, in any way, be addressed by an SIG. Unlike China, Namibia
does not posses the means to manufacture the components needed to maintain
nor the adequate human resources to interpret the analytical data produced by
an SIG so these duties would immediately have to be outsourced to foreign
entities.

In such a case, rather than being a deterrent to a threat, the SIG would become
the threat itself, as our national communications are de-facto compromised by
the entities that build the SIG and whomever they are linked to. Lacking the
skilled local personnel to adequately analyze the data received and the fact that
the methods devised by the SIG system to create such data are not created in
Namibia or subject to its IP and patent laws, regardless of how the business logic
will attempt to frame it, the system will require consultants or some middleman
process to interpret the data for our government and its defense entities leaving
us open to conventional ‘man-in-the-middle’ counterintelligence attacks where
national policy and sensitive national communiqués are open to influence by
outside agents.

An SIG may be able to intercept a GSM voice call made on a cellphone using 2G
technology (commonly known as ‘torch phones’) but modern popular tools for
global communications such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Skype et al now use end-to-
end encryption which is, for all practical purposes, impossible to decrypt. Unless
the government controlling the SIG blocks a service like Facebook or WhatsApp
wholesale or shuts down the internet totally with a so called ‘kill switch’, they
have no actual ability through the SIG to examine what is actually in the
conversations being held on those platforms.

It is also worth noting that 3G/4G/LTE voice/data technology is mostly Internet

based and uses similar encryption models. Close to 50% of Namibians now use
3G/4G/LTE devices with that percentage only growing annually, as
smartphones/devices get cheaper. Attempts to decrypt those kinds of
communications also face severe difficulties. Namibia is one of the first African
countries planning on implementing a 5G network, in that eventuality; an SIG
would make no technical sense at all.

Further on the issue of security is that an SIG becomes an even greater threat to
Namibia’s national stability if a capable hacking outfit were to find vulnerability
in its access system and is able to take control of the ‘kill-switch’ and hold our
government and national communications at ransom.

Having discussed some of the reasons arguing for an SIG, it is noticeable that the
very idea of an SIG tends to become self-defeating in today’s context as it’s based
on obsolete risk scenario modeling and technology. Another obvious flaw is that
an SIG stands in direct opposition to much of current national policy. The drive
for truly Universal Access to digital services that the Namibian government has
established for itself, freedom of information for Namibians on all media
platforms, the ‘always online’ e-Governance platform implementation plans,
robust emergency response services and disaster management (which requires
multiple redundant nodes of communication to be effective), digital delivery of
state controlled media broadcasts and making our communications market
sector more competitive cannot be reconciled with the notion of an SIG.

Even where it can be argued that these widely disparaging ideas can be
implemented side by side, then the strain of the cost that this exercise would put
on the Namibian economy cannot be justified especially in our current economic
climate. It must be stressed that in all reasonably foreseeable scenarios, an SIG
will have no effective use in 2-3 years given the trajectory of development in
communications technology. If security is a concern, and by all means it should
be, then monies would be more effectively spent by training Namibians and
enabling them to understand and develop cutting edge electronic security
technologies. There are also much more cost effective solutions than an SIG to
tackle modern electronic security and surveillance.

Arguably Namibia’s current largest national threat to stability is the fact that
there are no laws around electronic transmissions, transactions and cybercrime
in an increasingly ‘digital first’ world. Namibia’s digital infrastructure is regularly
used as a platform to launch hacking attacks around the globe and we have no
current ability to prosecute those responsible if we can catch them. In the event
that a Namibian nationals digital identity is stolen and then linked to a serious
crime such as a terror attack, Namibia currently has no recourse to defend such
citizens. This is a much larger threat than anything an SIG can protect against.

Bluntly put, a SIG is a very bad idea on all fronts except for the pockets of its
private company shareholders.

Tshuutheni Emvula
Co-Founder of The Tech Guys
www.thetechguysblog.com
+264812137260
Tshuutheni@thetechguysblog.com
LinkedIn: Tshuutheni Emvula