MCI (aka UUNET) own a portion of SAT3

B

biltonguy

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 15, 2005
Messages
600
Reaction score
0
Location
Cape Town
An article on ITWeb (http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2005/0509021036.asp?A=AFN&S=All Africa News&O=FPIN)
has an interesting little quote in it by country manager Angela Gahagan “It may seem selfish, but whatever belongs to MCI, we consider belongs to us. This includes the portion of the SAT-3 undersea cable owned by MCI as part of the consortium with Telkom,”.

Can someone explain to me, if they have access to the cable, why they dont drop their bandwidth prices and blow telkom out of the water?!!? Could it be that they are comfortable with the profits they are currently making from it? Or maybe have simply used up their "portion" of the pipe and simply set pricing to around stupidly expensive telkom prices to milk it for all its worth? :mad:
 
I dont know the ins and outs of this, but dont Telkom (and only Telkom) control the landing rights of the cable thus dictating the price, irrespective of who was part of the consortium that financed it?
 
Because unless they do like IS and put in their own dslam, your traffic still needs to get from the telkom atm network onto their network. Sticking a DSLAM at an exchange will cost you in the region of R100K per month ( for the ATM connection ).

I speak under correction on the R100K. Its a price i heard an ISP mention.
 
Obelix said:
Because unless they do like IS and put in their own dslam, your traffic still needs to get from the telkom atm network onto their network. Sticking a DSLAM at an exchange will cost you in the region of R100K per month ( for the ATM connection ).

I speak under correction on the R100K. Its a price i heard an ISP mention.
Click to expand...

UUnet do have an ATM link from telkom->their network for adsl.

afaik IS is using their peering link for this.
 
At least what it does suggest, is that if the .gov forces telkom to open up the landing point, competition could be immediate.
 
Yes, Telkom owns the landing station here in South Africa, so only their traffic goes through it.

The SNO also owns part of the cable. There was speculation at some stage that they would use the landing station in Namibia to get access to international bandwidth.
 
gkm said:
Yes, Telkom owns the landing station here in South Africa, so only their traffic goes through it.

The SNO also owns part of the cable. There was speculation at some stage that they would use the landing station in Namibia to get access to international bandwidth.
Click to expand...

AFAIK Telkom has exclusive landing rights till somewhere in 2007 :(
 
2007 looks like a watershed year. SAFE lands here next year and Eassy in 2007.

Maybe then we'll get a proper competitive environment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X