Progress?

H

Harley79

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Whats the 3G rollout looking like? Forget about phase this and phase that. Frankly we 5 months down the line yet 3 coverage in Durban sucks, infact even GPRS speed sucks. Was horrified this weekend, no wonder by durban associates think I am mad when I rant and rave about 3G

Does Vodacom have a "this is what works right now" coverage map and not a "this is what WILL work one day" coverage map? What is the status re: rollouts, what areas are being targeted, etc etc.

How are things going? Are Vodacom suddenly back peddling and trying to get EDGE, GPRS & 3G running at the same time??????

To my knowledge, Gateway, PAvillion, Vodacom Office in Durban and one half of one side of a base station in new germany (guess some Vodacom Exec lives somewhere nearby) are the only 3G spots in Durban.

:confused:
 
Whenever a new 3G site goes live, I get a SMS as part of a notification process. The last 2 weeks my cell phone has been going crazy as the sites are turned on and a large number of those were in the Durbs area.

Harley, won't you PM me your e-mail again? I'll put you in contact with the Durban planners who should have a full list for you.
 
Harley79, please pm me when you get that list of sites so i can get a copy from u..
 
3G coverage in KZN

At the end of April there was 68 sites ACTIVE IN KZN.Even some parts of the South coast have 3G coverage.PM you email address i will send you a list of active sites in KZN
 
I'd love to see Vodacom take a chance with pricing, but because Hellkom own 50% that will never happen.

I'm hoping that soon Vodacom will actually take some kind of innovative decision to put the needs of the country before those of it's profits and lower it's 3G prices.

Failure to do leaves Vodacom in the same position as Telkom - an uncaring monopoly.

Vodacom - Connecting Some.
 
I originally thought the point of 3G was to get the underpriviledged connected who do not have the luxury of phone lines. With the prices these guys are charging...
 
i think they dont want to compete with telkom, just beat them with pricing!
 
Decotey said:
I originally thought the point of 3G was to get the underpriviledged connected who do not have the luxury of phone lines. With the prices these guys are charging...
Click to expand...
I dunno why you had that impression, my impression is that 3G is aimed at the business road warrior types - a niche market but one which is big enough to be feasible for Cellery Network Operators to target.

The problem in SA is that Telkomonopoly is still a monopoly, so everytime a new broadband competitor arrives on the market, we all expect the service to compete with Telkomonopoly on every front, we expect too much from 3G, it is not meant as a replacement for users that want to get rid of their Telkomonopoly line & dialup charges.

When 3G has been around for a couple of years, network operators can recoup some of their costs and start branching out into other target markets by reducing their fees, right now it is early days.

Another thing to consider about rural areas - just over 3 months back on 1st of February, it became legal for Vodacom, MTN and CellC to create/lay their own inter-cell-tower cable/fibre infrastructure, prior to 1st Feb they were forced to use Telkomonopoly, and there was & is no such Telkomonopoly infrastructure in places where Telkomonopoly doesn't expect to make gazillions in profit...hence the USAL licencees bcos Telkomonopoly refused to go there.
 
ic said:
I dunno why you had that impression, my impression is that 3G is aimed at the business road warrior types - a niche market but one which is big enough to be feasible for Cellery Network Operators to target.
Click to expand...

Me, I have yet another 'impression'. I heard on good authority that (at least in Europe) the network operators were running out of capacity, and that 3G was the most elegant, perhaps the *only* way for them to carry more traffic.

Certainly the 'road warrior' market was never going to justify the insane prices they paid for thier 3G licenses in Europe.
 
magus said:
...
Certainly the 'road warrior' market was never going to justify the insane prices they paid for thier 3G licenses in Europe.
Click to expand...
True, but there is a difference between Europe & SA - Europe doesn't have the kind of underprivelleged areas that exist in SA and throughout Africa where there aren't even landlines or payphones or any kind of cellular presence at all. Even Al Qaeda in the mountains bordering Afghanistan & Pakistan are more privelleged with their satelite phones...
 
magus, the south african operators didnt pay nearly as much for their 3g licenses as the euro carriers did. i seem to remember that voda and mtn only paid something like 10 bar each, but i stand corrected.

i dont think 3g was ever meant to compete with adsl and other fixed services - its a technology designed around mobility and multimedia applications.
however, i quick cost benefit analysis shows that no other connectivity options in SA can come anywhere near the entry cost for cell based data. think of it this way :
a. dial up = telephone line rental + isp fee + call charges
b. GPRS = data charge per meg

a 100MB data package costs R100 during peak times. to download 100MB via analogue would take you between 5 and 6 hours.

So lets put some numbers to this then :

a. Telkom line (R87) plus Telkomsa ISP (R79) plus 6 hours anytime (R144) = R310
b. MTN 100MB GPRS package = R100

That makes a cell based carrier 3 times cheaper during peak times than what Telkom analogue is. Whats more, your performance via GPRS, GPRS+, EDGE or 3G will in all likelihood at least match that of Telkom analogue, and if you have 3G, nearly match ADSL.

Data over cellular really changes the playing fields - it allows people who just want to check email and browse the web a much cheaper entry point. If you lower the barrier for entry, you are in effect taking internet access to a much wider audience.

to me the only real "pity" here is that this initiative is being done by the cell networks. this should really be telkoms space...

cheers -
 
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