Don't Let Lawyers Run (Ruin) Your Carrier - The Case of Africa
African carriers need to adopt the more pragmatic approach of European, North American, and Asian carriers. Virtually no carriers in these regions require customers to sign NDAs to get a price quote. It accomplishes nothing since buyers share pricing information with impunity. Nor is there need to sign the MSA and then the service order form. Again, American carriers, including competitive carriers like Lumen, skip the NDA unless the client requests it, and even skip the MSA by putting language in the SOF that says signing it implies acceptance of the default MSA. When I was at Hibernia Atlantic, we prided ourselves on the 24 hour turn around, the time from the verbal yes to customer signature. I have to meet a major African infrastructure provider who can do that. Clearly this bureaucratic quagmire is the fault of the colonial powers that once governed Africa. They imposed their clumsy 19th European administrative systems on the...