Who will win the broadband battle?

Interesting analysis RPM, and it raises an even bigger issue that everybody should be thinking about. Why are fixed line installations outnumbered by Contract Cell-phone Customers? And what is the overlap between these two customer bases. What percentage of "Closer 3" spend customers also run a contract cell-phone i.e. People spending a combined >R1,000 pm on communications? Trends in this demographic is probably an excellent way of tracking the economy.
 
I find all these "Who's gonna win" articles interesting... Correct me if I'm wrong, but it does not matter how many subscribers anybody signs up, ALL the providers still have to go though Telkom, one way or another.... How many ways do we have out of SA for internet... SAT3 and ? and who runs SAT3?
 
Wireless sucks :
1. If you live outside of a major city there is zero iBurst coverage.
2. 3D, HSPDA, Edge, etc are all far too expensive.

The reason why Telkom have done so well in the ADSL arena is because they can reliably connect people both inside and outside of cities and still do so at a "reasonable" cost.
Yes, Telkom may still be way overpriced but so are iBurst, MTN and Vodacom.
 
Paul_S said:
Wireless sucks :
1. If you live outside of a major city there is zero iBurst coverage.
2. 3D, HSPDA, Edge, etc are all far too expensive.

The reason why Telkom have done so well in the ADSL arena is because they can reliably connect people both inside and outside of cities and still do so at a "reasonable" cost.
Yes, Telkom may still be way overpriced but so are iBurst, MTN and Vodacom.
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Spot on. There is no Sentech or iBurst coverage in my area. So I have no option but to go with Telkom because 3G is way too expensive.

My question is if Telkom is forced to drop their prices (in a perfect world), will the others follow suit? I would think yes.
 
Whilst it goes against current international trends for a country to rely on mobile services, it may be the formula that works for South Africa and one that takes us into the information age.
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I think this might be more a case of "we have no choice" in a lot of instances. The reason for not having much of a choice is simple, it's called Telkom. It is unfortunate that poeple have to opt for more expensive broadband services (wireless) beacause the only fixed line operator is unwilling and unable to listen to the customers gripes, and then try to do something to make it right. Maybe it's a case where they are now starting to reap the benifits of their disinformation campaigns, total lack of sympathy towards their customers, and inability to provide a decent, well priced fixed broadband service to the people of SA.

Hmmm on second thaught, maybe we are slowly becoming less complacent with consistently being shafted by big business. This I think is a good thing for us, and a very bad thing for Telkom, this I like :)
 
I always love these articles...

Aaahh yes Vodacom and MTN provide broadband solutions....at something like R600 a month for 1gig of data. Wow, what are you going to do with 1gig of data at high speed? Or should I say what's the point, all you will do is surf some websites and check your e-mail. Now you can do that on a dial-up account or using GPRS.

Video streaming, Google Earth usage, large file downloads....these are the things that broandband was designed for and they need a massive amount of bandwidth. For instance using Google Eath for about and hour can burn over 100megs....wow 1 hour and 10% of your cap is gone. The same would apply for video streaming.

So yes, they do provide broadband speeds, but how useful are such connections when considering what broadband is meant to be used for.

On the competitive pricing of local HSDPA services with those overseas, who cares man this a mute point. Wireless connectivity is not widely used overseas, its a niche market. Therefore, the prices overseas are higher in comparison to fixed line services so if local HSDPA providers are in line with those prices they are still comparatively high.

Side note: Are the HSDPA/3G figures not somewhat skewed, I know that I have activated 3G on my cellphone but all I use it for is email checking. I would guess that I am included as an HSDPA user, or do they only base it on ppl who have actually taken out monthly HSDPA data package contracts?
 
I think a lot of broadband users have more than one means to connect to the internet. While on the road or out of town I connect my 3G phone to my laptop. It keeps me in touch. But it is only affordable for light use; browsing and email, mostly. This is internet access, not broadband,

While at home, I use ADSL (almost) exclusively. For browsing, email, video/radio streaming, downloading, p2p, etc. In other words, Broadband.

So I am one number in both columns, mobile and fixed, but the vast bulk of my usage is ADSL, because it is the only means available in SA for affordable broadband.

So who will win the broadband battle? Sadly, there is only one competitor. Telkom's ADSL. My bandwidth cost per Gb last month? R6/Gb on an uncapped IS package.

ADSL (Capped) from R50/Gb
Iburst from R139/Gb
3G from R400/Gb
HSDPA from R500/Gb

So while there is plenty of competition for internet access, broadband is a one horse race.
 
I've reached the point where I don't care anymore...a few more months and I'm off to Oz and taking my money with me. These plebs can run the country and it's infrastructure into the ground without raping me a new A-Hole.

So sad but true.
 
Good point Gatecrasher! I also think the only reason why the wireless guys can compete is because of Telkom's poor service delivery (installation times, coverage, no lines etc)
 
I think telkom will win....reason being that they can still reach more people. Also maybe wireless can win the race on customer relations, but the biggest problem is that the actual service is just too unreliable..i have not spoken to a single wireless customer who has not had problems with his line.
 
Mnn, still the same old story.. Always rants about who and how... And we adsl users just want one answer.. WHEN?!?!?!? Not another story about ICASA needs to step in and this needs to happen and we are waiting for this..
Old news and frankly, it doesnt mean **** too us.. Give us DATES and STICK to it!! That is the least companys can do for us in South Africa.. That is my complaint.. Service levels... And darn bad Promises.. I think that "some" partys has proven that you can make promises that will never see the light of day.. Anyone can make promises... HAHAH

For a change.. Do what you promise!!
 
I think forumites here are the power users and so demand more bandwidth/performance however, I suspect that a lot of people (sales people/road warriors and lusers) probably do fine with a 500MB or 1GB cap in which case the mobile offerings are far better offering a truly mobile solution.
Telkom may loose the last mile battle but they will still carry the data on their core and always have the chance to get their pound of flesh(customer rands)
As a quick asside, I just returned from Dakar in Senegal. Offerings there are $20/month for 512KB down 256KB up unlimited! AND all the hotels and offices have hotspots that are open and FREE.
 
Byte said:
My question is if Telkom is forced to drop their prices (in a perfect world), will the others follow suit? I would think yes.
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No, they won't. They can't, not without incurring losses.

Everybody still has to buy bandwidth from Telkom. Telkom could drop their retail prices to next to nothing and still nobody else would be able to follow suit because Telkom controls wholesale and can charge whatever the hell they feel like.

Telkom holds all the cards in this industry... and I do mean all of them.
 
Paul_S said:
Wireless sucks :
1. If you live outside of a major city there is zero iBurst coverage.
2. 3D, HSPDA, Edge, etc are all far too expensive.

The reason why Telkom have done so well in the ADSL arena is because they can reliably connect people both inside and outside of cities and still do so at a "reasonable" cost.
Yes, Telkom may still be way overpriced but so are iBurst, MTN and Vodacom.
Click to expand...
Yes HSDPA & iBurst prices are still relatively high for large data usage volumes compared to ADSL, and personally I would like to see the HSDPA pricing reduced so I can increase my monthly data bundle size, but I have to point out that Telkodemonopolies has definitely not "done so well in the ADSL arena" - just look at how low the ADSL penetration rate is, then consider that the dismal ADSL penetration took 4+ years [2002..to date] to develop to an embarrassing [for Telkodemonopolies and SA as a whole] low ~200000 ADSL customers - in some countries that figure is turned over in a few months not years.

And the ADSL pricing is definitely not reasonable considering that it uses copper wires and not expensive radio equipment & multiple-base-stations per area. It costs Telkodemonopolies a lot less to deploy ADSL in an area than it does for Vodacom & MTN & iBurst SA to deploy their wireless networks, yet Telkodemonopolies still manages to fail despite holding all the broadband & telecoms cards...:rolleyes:

It does beg the question: can NeOTel really struggle to compete with such a dismal failure as Telkodemonopolies? And then there are the municipalities and hopefully GTS at some point, all with the potential to chip away at Telkodemonopolies until the beast totally falls to pieces.
 
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I was kinda hoping that for once the consumer might win but the deck continues to be stacked in their favour instead of ours. :o
 
Once again it all boils down to cost.
 
Telkom has 5-7million landlines in SA. There are over 30million cell handsets currently in operation in SA, mostly Vodacom and MTN. So the potential customer base for the latter is much more than Telkom's. However, it is wrong to use these as base figures - one need to limit these ref points to those that also have computers / laptops. The potential BB market then suddenly drops quite dramatically (rough guess is about 2million). Only when computers / laptops is priced within an affordable range for the mass market in SA (<R2000) will the potential BB market increase resembling the 5-7 million Telkom or 30million+ cell customers.
 
ic said:
... ~200000 ADSL customers - in some countries that figure is turned over in a few months not years.
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Yeah but you can't compare apples and oranges.
How many people in SA have computers at home?

And the ADSL pricing is definitely not reasonable considering that it uses copper wires and not expensive radio equipment & multiple-base-stations per area. It costs Telkodemonopolies a lot less to deploy ADSL in an area than it does for Vodacom & MTN & iBurst SA to deploy their wireless networks, yet Telkodemonopolies still manages to fail despite holding all the broadband & telecoms cards...:rolleyes:
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Wireless should be far far cheaper to roll out than ADSL equipped exchanges.
DSLAMs are darn expensive and the ADSL infrastructure requires major system upgrades. Wireless doesn't require laying thousands of wires to each customer - the connection from the base stations to the customer is virtually free.

iBurst charges R 599/month for the G3 (3GB) package.
Cybersmart charges R125 for 3GiB (SAIX accounts) so iBurst's bandwidth costs for the G3 package can't be much more than about R125 if they go through SAIX.
That means the iBurst G3 rental is about R474/month and that excludes the very expensive hardware you have to buy.
Looks more like a failure of the wireless providers to provide a cheaper solution. :cool:
 
Paul_S said:
iBurst charges R 599/month for the G3 (3GB) package.
Cybersmart charges R125 for 3GiB (SAIX accounts) so iBurst's bandwidth costs for the G3 package can't be much more than about R125 if they go through SAIX.
That means the iBurst G3 rental is about R474/month and that excludes the very expensive hardware you have to buy.
Looks more like a failure of the wireless providers to provide a cheaper solution. :cool:
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That or Telkom charges a whole lot more for wholesale bandwidth than resold ADSL accounts. (<-- speculation)
 
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