Why does only Telkom provide ADSL lines? Why cant other ISPs provide their own lines?

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parmalat

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Why does only Telkom provide ADSL lines? Why cant other ISPs provide their own lines?
 
AcidRaZor said:
I'm wondering which rock you've been living under the past decade...
Click to expand...

well the fact is telkom has the monopoly, and they own the lines so like how neotel has done the put their own infrastructure in place so that they can provide their own services, as to avoid paying Telkom
 
ISP's have nothing stopping them from laying down their own cable or fibre to the home.

The problem is that all the homes and streets and roads already exist. To lay down cabling now would involve trenching. A lot of trenching. When you trench, you hit water pipes and power lines and existing copper lines and all sorts of other things, like sewers and secret underground tunnels and bunkers.

When you break stuff, it's expensive to fix. People get mad. It already cost you an arm and a leg to do the trenching (not to mention the permits) and then you have to go and give a kidney to fix everybody else's stuff that you broke because your crews are incompetent or the maps used to plan the trenches were wrong. You could opt for overhead cabling instead of trenches, but in SA if something is visible, it means you can steal it real easy. And copper is a delicious midnight snack for cable thieves.

Finally you get your own cabling down in a decent number of neighbourhoods. You've even managed to install switches and exchanges and you've spent several years and several million or billion in capital expenditure to get the infrastructure in place and repair old Mrs Potgieter's driveway and replant her rose bushes just right because you destroyed them the first time.

Now, finally, you can offer a service to the people living there. They can finally choose between you and Telkom. Only problem is that your service isn't really all that much cheaper than Telkom's. In fact, you probably cost more than Telkom does, because you had to foot the bill yourself whereas Telkom was heavily subsidised by the Guavament back in the days when things were still cheap(er).

If you opt to make a loss for a few years just to build your client base, you'll price yourself lower than Telkom. You market your newer, better, cheaper service. People in the neighbourhoods where you managed to put down lines are too lazy to move, or don't believe you'll be any better. On top of that, old Mrs Potgieter is still mad at you for messing up her driveway and rose bushes, so probably won't want to use your service anyway. Some will move, no doubt, but probably not enough to keep you afloat. You keep losing money until you have nothing left, and then you fold (or get bought out by Telkom).

If, somehow, miraculously, your costs are not as bad as we think they would be, AND you manage to steal a sizeable portion of Telkom's client base away from them.... the next ISP will decide he wants a slice of the pie (after all, you managed to do it) and starts trenching away to put down their own cables. In the process, they dig up both yours and Telkoms' lines, and you have to sit with the same problem everyone else experienced when you were trenching.

TL;DR: Telkom has the monopoly. It's too expensive to put down last mile cabling. Old Mrs Potgieter will hate you for all the days of her life. Let's all wait and see if LLU actually manages to make a difference.
 
Last edited:
AniV said:
ISP's have nothing stopping them from laying down their own cable or fibre to the home.

The problem is that all the homes and streets and roads already exist. To lay down cabling now would involve trenching. A lot of trenching. When you trench, you hit water pipes and power lines and existing copper lines and all sorts of other things, like sewers and secret underground tunnels and bunkers.

When you break stuff, it's expensive to fix. People get mad. It already cost you an arm and a leg to do the trenching (not to mention the permits) and then you have to go and give a kidney to fix everybody else's stuff that you broke because your crews are incompetent or the maps used to plan the trenches were wrong. You could opt for overhead cabling instead of trenches, but in SA if something is visible, it means you can steal it real easy. And copper is a delicious midnight snack for cable thieves.

Finally you get your own cabling down in a decent number of neighbourhoods. You've even managed to install switches and exchanges and you've spent several years and several million or billion in capital expenditure to get the infrastructure in place and repair old Mrs Potgieter's driveway and replant her rose bushes just right because you destroyed them the first time.

Now, finally, you can offer a service to the people living there. They can finally choose between you and Telkom. Only problem is that your service isn't really all that much cheaper than Telkom's. In fact, you probably cost more than Telkom does, because you had to foot the bill yourself whereas Telkom was heavily subsidised by the Guavament back in the days when things were still cheap(er).

If you opt to make a loss for a few years just to build your client base, you'll price yourself lower than Telkom. You market your newer, better, cheaper service. People in the neighbourhoods where you managed to put down lines are too lazy to move, or don't believe you'll be any better. On top of that, old Mrs Potgieter is still mad at you for messing up her driveway and rose bushes, so probably won't want to use your service anyway. Some will move, no doubt, but probably not enough to keep you afloat. You keep losing money until you have nothing left, and then you fold (or get bought out by Telkom).

If, somehow, miraculously, your costs are not as bad as we think they would be, AND you manage to steal a sizeable portion of Telkom's client base away from them.... the next ISP will decide he wants a slice of the pie (after all, you managed to do it) and starts trenching away to put down their own cables. In the process, they dig up both yours and Telkoms' lines, and you have to sit with the same problem everyone else experienced when you were trenching.

TL;DR: Telkom has the monopoly. It's too expensive to put down last mile cabling. Old Mrs Potgieter will hate you for all the days of her life. Let's all wait and see if LLU actually manages to make a difference.
Click to expand...

Good point. Well put.
 
AniV said:
ISP's have nothing stopping them from laying down their own cable or fibre to the home.

The problem is that all the homes and streets and roads already exist. To lay down cabling now would involve trenching. A lot of trenching. When you trench, you hit water pipes and power lines and existing copper lines and all sorts of other things, like sewers and secret underground tunnels and bunkers.

When you break stuff, it's expensive to fix. People get mad. It already cost you an arm and a leg to do the trenching (not to mention the permits) and then you have to go and give a kidney to fix everybody else's stuff that you broke because your crews are incompetent or the maps used to plan the trenches were wrong. You could opt for overhead cabling instead of trenches, but in SA if something is visible, it means you can steal it real easy. And copper is a delicious midnight snack for cable thieves.

Finally you get your own cabling down in a decent number of neighbourhoods. You've even managed to install switches and exchanges and you've spent several years and several million or billion in capital expenditure to get the infrastructure in place and repair old Mrs Potgieter's driveway and replant her rose bushes just right because you destroyed them the first time.

Now, finally, you can offer a service to the people living there. They can finally choose between you and Telkom. Only problem is that your service isn't really all that much cheaper than Telkom's. In fact, you probably cost more than Telkom does, because you had to foot the bill yourself whereas Telkom was heavily subsidised by the Guavament back in the days when things were still cheap(er).

If you opt to make a loss for a few years just to build your client base, you'll price yourself lower than Telkom. You market your newer, better, cheaper service. People in the neighbourhoods where you managed to put down lines are too lazy to move, or don't believe you'll be any better. On top of that, old Mrs Potgieter is still mad at you for messing up her driveway and rose bushes, so probably won't want to use your service anyway. Some will move, no doubt, but probably not enough to keep you afloat. You keep losing money until you have nothing left, and then you fold (or get bought out by Telkom).

If, somehow, miraculously, your costs are not as bad as we think they would be, AND you manage to steal a sizeable portion of Telkom's client base away from them.... the next ISP will decide he wants a slice of the pie (after all, you managed to do it) and starts trenching away to put down their own cables. In the process, they dig up both yours and Telkoms' lines, and you have to sit with the same problem everyone else experienced when you were trenching.

TL;DR: Telkom has the monopoly. It's too expensive to put down last mile cabling. Old Mrs Potgieter will hate you for all the days of her life. Let's all wait and see if LLU actually manages to make a difference.
Click to expand...

Who the hell is Mrs Potgieter, and more importantly, who gives a rats ass how she feels about you?


Sent from my iPhone 4
 
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