Why don't Telkom install their own SAT cable?

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GavinMannion

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I was just thinking today, with all the obscene profits that Telkom have stolen from us and the fact that SAT3 will imminently :D be taken away from them why don't they just lay their own cable and then sell it off to the unsuspecting people of SA and Africa.

SAT3 is 15 000 Km's long and cost $250M to install.

Cape Town to Miami is 12 314 km

So it's a shorter distance and cables are now much cheaper to lay so if we say it will still cost them $250m (R1.75B) That is 1/6 of their profit from last year.

Could you imagine how much they could make from that and the difference that would make to our available bandwidth in the country...

Why don't MTN or Vodacom put one in... That is not much money for these corporations......

Hmm... Do you think the bank will lend me R2 000 000 000??? :D

Maybe we should start a collections pot... I'll give R1000 anyone got the rest?
 
Cool only R1 999 998 950

We are getting there ;)....

Seriously though it seems to like a valid investment for any of the telecommunications companies to make..

Then we can create call centers for all the American corps as well....
 
well, the SAIX gaming forums managed to gather R21000 in one week for the purchase of a new 64 player gaming server.
 
Makes you wonder why VodaCom/MTN/Sentech/IS/Verizon/etc haven't all done it. They should all be able to afford to lay a cable individually
 
Exactly, it looks like a lot of money but to these guys it really isn't...

They have no excuse, maybe we should start hammering them more... They complain about the cost of BW but they are doing nothing about it.

Join MTN,Voda, Cell C, IS and etc :).... Make 1 cable... R400m each. That's nothing
 
Okay quick update :D....
These are all profit figures

MTN made R4.2bn in the 6 months leading up to Nov 2005 (Latest I can find)
Vodacom made R8.9 billion in the year ending March 2006
Cell C R442 Million (Ag shame)
Didata R450 Million
Verizon... Not finding anything for the local branch.... But lots I am sure.

So we need R2 billion.

Between MTN and Vodacom they made R16 billion profit in 1 year.
Seriously, they claim that Telkom is ripping them but they are not being truthful... They could fix the problem if they wanted to, they just enjoy ripping us as well......
 
Licenses, landing rights, distance (cables don't go a straight line), lots of reasons why it's not feasable. It's also not their business to run international fiber optic cables - thus something they may not be interested in (not their primary business concern).
 
Cape Town to Miami = 12314 km's and about 9km's of depth in places with extreeme sea currents.
No ... the cable must be laid near land.
But ... as far as I know ... the existing cables are not functioning at capacity so this is not even neccesary.

How do you stop greed ?
 
They would own the landing rights here. --> Profit
Distance, the price of laying cables is a lot less than it used to be so the R2b should still be enough
Not their business to run fiber, They don't have to they just create a joint company to run that.
Not their primary concern --> Huge profit from laying cables --> Profit being their primary concern :)

All cell companies are moving more towards offering data as well, huge profits, so bandwidth is a major cost consideration making this idea more appealing to them.

Especially to Didata and Verizon.... That is their business.
 
You must be able to lay them away from land, else how would the US connect to anything?

Something to look up.. I will be back :D

Okay I'm back

https://www.tat-14.com/tat14/stations.jsp (What awesome specs this Tat-14 cable has)

They don't need to go along the shore... SAT does that to offer landing points to multiple countries

Take a look at this map...
Maybe we should head for Brazil instead, they have tons of cables going there.
 
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Telkom as a company is very short sighted. They make decisions that will hurt them in the long run if they can make a quick buck today. That is why they are sitting with the huge amount of backorders today and can't cope with the amount of work. The existing cable will get overloaded, they will sqweeze every last bit out of it and then will still not upgrade/lay a new one. That is if they ever get such a large amount of people signed up. What with all the excuses as to why you can't get adsl.
 
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They really should buy their own SAT cable. Makes sense really. Then they can release the old one happily and attempt to charge as much as they want for that crappy ****e.
 
Exactly, whoever installs it doesn't really matter.

With EASSY and a new one we will have 4 to choose from, they won't be able to block all of them,

Even at normal charges they stand to make a fortune anyway
 
* SAT3 has spare capacity and can still be upgraded to provide more
* Telkom has monopoly on landing rights
* Most of abovementioned companies have an interest in EASSy, which is almost finalised
 
If they loose the monopoly and it gets opened up for all at cost while ivy has a sugar rush one day it will not be feasable to run their own since they can't charge us as they use to.
 
All these data cables are profitable so it will always be feasable...

EASSY might be nearly finalised but they will still have to share with the rest of Africa according to the terms of the agreement, I think the big cell operators would profit from having their own cable.

I seem to be the only one who thinks this though :p....
 
It really makes no sense. South Africa is in a bandwidth stranglehold and nobody is prepared to do something about it. It doesn't look like the large companies are interested in making more money. Wierd... maybe they are too short sited to think of something like this???
 
nah what i meant was there is no real shortage.. and with close to at cost for sat-3 been flaunted about, essay coming too the margin for competition can't be as much as they getting for sat-3 right now. So investors will have to be tied down for longer periods than the old africa style investments
 
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