South African Broadband War: The winners and losers

The statistic that really stands our here is how tiny the WiMAX user base is relative to the mainstream technologies, completely out of proportion to the hype. I guess ICASA must know something we don't, given that it wants to auction prime spectrum to a bunch more WiMAX licensees and stop us getting LTE in South Africa.
 
Total 2,648,161
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The bigger picture here is that the internet penetration here is South Africa is astonishingly low (+- 47 million current population)
 
Well I for one would love to go back to ADSL.
But due to cable theft ( And Telkom's policy of not replacing cable ) I no longer have it as an option. With policies like that what do they expect ?
 
Sad thing is I hardly call using your cellphone (or a dongle which is the same thing) to connect to the internet is hardly a broadband connection. Most people get pathetic speeds with it (cause really in most houses you don't get a 3g signal thus you are left with slow 2g signal) and coverage may be broad but not enough. How often do you get dropped with your phone call or gprs connection? To many times to count sadly.
With this in mind most vodacom and mtn numbers are lost making it look just as crapy as before.
 
foX2delta said:
Sad thing is I hardly call using your cellphone
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For this I am grateful! :)

Jokes aside:
foX2delta said:
Most people get pathetic speeds with it (cause really in most houses you don't get a 3g signal thus you are left with slow 2g signal) and coverage may be broad but not enough.
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Source? Have a look at the speedtest results in the Vodacom, MTN and Telkom 3G sub-forums on MyBB, there are plenty of people getting getting >4Mbps results.
foX2delta said:
How often do you get dropped with your phone call or gprs connection? To many times to count sadly.
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How many of those times are you moving? I would guess that most people using 3G/HSDPA are stationary.
 
McT said:
And yet Telkom are apathetic to their opportunities by making entry to broadband affordable :confused:
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Yup, I guess it is the responsibility of the company CEO to steer it in the wrong direction and I think the current bloke did a brilliant job in that...
 
The reason for the high mobile broadband uptake and poor ADSL performance in South Africa comes down to competition, says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.
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Rubbish, its because of the poor ADSL penetration and the fact that telkom forces you to get a telkom phone line through them for ADSL thereby adding to the whole adsl cost and taking it out of the financial reach of most people.

90% of those 3G users are mxit and mobile handset facebookers.
 
ginggs said:
For this I am grateful! :)

Jokes aside:

Source? Have a look at the speedtest results in the Vodacom, MTN and Telkom 3G sub-forums on MyBB, there are plenty of people getting getting >4Mbps results.

How many of those times are you moving? I would guess that most people using 3G/HSDPA are stationary.
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Granted i haven't looked at speed test but i will, and will be looking at how many unique people are getting there speeds (cause they have over a million).

I have never spoken to a person who is completely happy with there dongle here in the western cape outside of cape town it self.
And the major concern of people is the speed.

Never argued that they can't get great speed but time of day or night plays a huge roll with there towers and number of people. Thus most towers have to many people connected so you can't get great speed and you are dropped often because of it.
 
I use MTN 3G on my phone, Vodacom 3G on my laptop, Telkom ADSL at home, and Telkom ADSL at work.

So methinks that user number over there is not accurate, it should perhaps be called "connections", not "people".
 
More proof of how useless telkom is . I shall now name them "Fail-tanic" a fail of titanic proportions ! With them it is all about short term gain , but long term loss , they sell off Vodacom who now has almost double the amount of users than telkom .... Fail-tanic , to a huge degree! Something i cant understand for the life of me, is that thousands of people can see and know what needs to change at telkom and how to make them more competive again , yet Fail-tanic does not want to listen ! It is so simple honestly . Have a look at how much they are loosing each and every month because of people leaving . They can stop it , drop the line rental , charge a bit more for calls , get more market share , that will translate to more profits !

Fail-tanic needs someone with vision , drive and knowledge , not a cadre to complete the BEE status .
 
I can understand Telkom's dilemma on the one hand. Government insists that they install x amounts of line to the needy. The problem with the needy, is that they can barely afford the basics, never mind the R100+ line rental. So Telkom goes through this endless cycle of installing and removing lines, as these needy people apply, and months later defaults on their payments. This must be hitting Telkom where it hurts, plus the penalties involved for not being able to supply those lines as mandated by their license.

Then we come to cable theft. This, also hurt any business that relies on it. But the blame can be squarely at the feet of the government, as they don't treat these with enough urgency. They should be more strict with those liberating the copper lines, and those that sells it. Telecommunication infrastructure is the blood lines of a country. If a country loses its telecoms infrastructure, it is a virtual island in the world of today. Thus treat copper theft as terrorism, and the problem will be greatly reduced.

Telkom should really rethink their business model, and negotiate with the government on how the needy could be best served. A phone line in every home is nice, but the needy might be better served by having access to the internet/phones at a central place, like a community centre.

Just my random thoughts on the matter ...
 
Kabal said:
More proof of how useless telkom is . I shall now name them "Fail-tanic" a fail of titanic proportions ! With them it is all about short term gain , but long term loss , they sell off Vodacom who now has almost double the amount of users than telkom .... Fail-tanic , to a huge degree! Something i cant understand for the life of me, is that thousands of people can see and know what needs to change at telkom and how to make them more competive again , yet Fail-tanic does not want to listen ! It is so simple honestly . Have a look at how much they are loosing each and every month because of people leaving . They can stop it , drop the line rental , charge a bit more for calls , get more market share , that will translate to more profits !

Fail-tanic needs someone with vision , drive and knowledge , not a cadre to complete the BEE status .
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QFT. Just take a look at their share price.
 
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