Vodacom’s R 2-Billion 3G/HSDPA investment grows further

Cell C’s CEO Jeffrey Hedberg recently said that his company does not see a good business case for investing in a 3G/HSDPA network and that he thinks it will be difficult for a cellular provider to show a return on its mobile broadband investment.
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While I tend to think that CellC missed the boat and it is now too late to invest in a 3G network to compete with the 3G networks of Vodacom & MTN, I have to wonder if CellC has a grip on reality - the world is moving away from circuit switched calls and towards raw data transfer where no distinction is made between a VoIP call and other data - it's all data, and for that one needs broadband, so failing to see the need for broadband [mobile or not] is basically the same as failing to see where the market is going...I could understand it if CellC announced that it was waiting [possibly a couple of years] for Mobile WiMax, but CellC seems to have trashed that idea as well...:rolleyes:

IMO CellC is past its sell-by-date and ripe for that takeover by Telkodemonopolies - or even by NeOTel.
 
Well u have to also look at when they came into the market and where the other two providers were. Both were very well entrenched and without a significant partner it would i think be a hopeless cause. If telkom sold vodacom stock & took over cell-c they might be doing the public a favour
 
You are so right IC, I couldnt believe what cell Cs CEO was saying there. I suspect hes another tech challenged CEO who really does no use the technology.
In terms of Vodacoms investment it makes perfet sense and is money well spent. Consumer data requirements continually grow and the convienience of mobile data is undeniable. If they can get their economies of scale together and their pricing right they can cut telkom out of the loop almost entirely (but of course still earn them loads of cash being a shareholder).
 
Vodacom Coverage

Hi All

Does anyone know what i should do to get better coverag in my area. I have GPRS coverage throughout my house, in one specific place i do get 3G/UTMS HSDPA coverage, but that is also only know and then and not always, and if i move my laptop 1 inch, i am stuffed again.
Is there some petition that needs to filled out, or some website where i have to report this.
Any help will be appriciated.

Thanks in advanced


Carl
 
R 2-Billion 3G/HSDPA investment and I'm still without it ? Come Vodacom I'll even help to unload the trokkie, just bring the equipment.
 
Cell C's target market is the lower income groups, who hardly use their gprs yet alone 3G. In my opinion, I don't think it would make any business sense for them to implement 3G, unless they want to start targeting the more "affluent" income groups.
 
Alchemist said:
Cell C's target market is the lower income groups, who hardly use their gprs yet alone 3G. In my opinion, I don't think it would make any business sense for them to implement 3G, unless they want to start targeting the more "affluent" income groups.
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It would make a lot more sense to use GPRS+MXit instead of SMSes, although I don't know if CellC has been selling GPRS-capable handsets to its lower income group customers...
 
Yep, it is very poor judgement not to invest in broadband technology- the faster a customer can use up data the faster they'll have to buy more. Knowledge is power to quote a cliche but isn't this the truth? Without focusing on driving the flow of information Cell C are thereby shooting themselves in the foot :rolleyes: But then again, maybe they already have considering they have never made a profit.
 
Data packages are too varied.

Al that is required is to have a basic product with an option to automatically purchase gigs as required and for them to roll over.

Then they'll see their products become extremely popular.
 
ic said:
While I tend to think that CellC missed the boat and it is now too late to invest in a 3G network to compete with the 3G networks of Vodacom & MTN, I have to wonder if CellC has a grip on reality - the world is moving away from circuit switched calls and towards raw data transfer where no distinction is made between a VoIP call and other data - it's all data, and for that one needs broadband, so failing to see the need for broadband [mobile or not] is basically the same as failing to see where the market is going...I could understand it if CellC announced that it was waiting [possibly a couple of years] for Mobile WiMax, but CellC seems to have trashed that idea as well...:rolleyes:
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I think they don't have the money to invest in 3G or even WiMax. Where would they get R2 Billion with their current ratings.
 
Surely R2 billion is very little to spend on HSDPA. Vodafone in the UK spent 9.4 Billion US dollars just for the 3G LICENSE i.e. they spent THIRTY THREE times more just on their 30MHz spectrum than Vodacom has spent on their entire rollout! Vodafone UK has also just slashed their data rates to well below the SA rates. People ***THIRTY THREE*** times more ...

http://dhdeans.blogspot.com/2007/02/two-reasons-wimax-will-beat-3g-on-price.html
 
Yotch said:
Surely R2 billion is very little to spend on HSDPA. Vodafone in the UK spent 9.4 Billion US dollars just for the 3G LICENSE i.e. they spent THIRTY THREE times more just on their 30MHz spectrum than Vodacom has spent on their entire rollout! Vodafone UK has also just slashed their data rates to well below the SA rates. People ***THIRTY THREE*** times more ...

http://dhdeans.blogspot.com/2007/02/two-reasons-wimax-will-beat-3g-on-price.html
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Vodacom's HSPA rollout is ongoing, i.e. new HSPA base-stations are being rolled out on a daily basis, the same would be true of MTN's HSPA rollout, so ZAR2bn is only the amount spent by Vodacom up to now.

Luckily !CASA didn't charge billions for 3G licenses in SA - otherwise there would be no ROI potential for Vodacom & MTN in SA. The fact that European network operators paid billions for their 3G licenses, is an indication of sheer stupidity & greediness on the part of European network operators, which has bitten them in the rear and it will be a very long time before those 3G licenses produce a ROI.

The main reason why HSPA is still costly in SA, is the Telkodemonopolies factor, and a reluctance by Vodacom & MTN & CellC to self-provide their own wired [fibre optic] network infrastructure - this is changing, but I bet that Vodacom & MTN & CellC wish in hindsight that they had started laying fibre on 2005-02-01.
 
@ic: Surely if the SA operators really wanted us to believe that Telkom was the reason for the high data prices then the out of bundle rates would be very similar to the in bundle rates i.e. R2000+ per gigabyte out of bundle rate versus R289 for a one gigabyte bundle. Obviously these kind of rates have nothing to do with Telkom and are just a trick to boost profits. Can you think of another product or service where if you buy 10X the volume the unit price decreases to roughly 1/10 i.e. R2.00 per meg decreases to 29c? If the major constraints on supplying this service economically were due to Telkom surely your rollover campaign would have received serious consideration by now? An out of bundle rate well below 50c per megabyte is surely feasible in the current climate even if large bundles are not. I'm sure that the major reason why ICASA offered the 3G licenses cheaply was to encourage the growth of broadband in SA and so far the uptake has been well below what could have been achieved. In India for example (according to Neotel's website), there are 1.7 million new CDMA2000 data subscribers every month. If Neotel are planning to offer a CDMA EVDO service I would expect that it will have to compete pricewise with ADSL which is currently being offered for ~R169 (1GB). I'm sure that HSDPA could also be supplied at similar or even lower rates. Some HSDPA networks in Europe continue to provide a 56Kbps service after reaching the bundle limit which could be another idea to reducing costs in SA i.e. offering discounted slower speed packages or reduced off peak rates.
 
Yotch said:
If the major constraints on supplying this service economically were due to Telkom surely your rollover campaign would have received serious consideration by now? An out of bundle rate well below 50c per megabyte is surely feasible in the current climate even if large bundles are not.
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I'm sure that the R2.00/MB [searchforum]OOBR[/searchforum] is a money-spinner, but the saying 'a fool and his money are soon parted' also applies, and consumers that stray into OOB territory should theoretically learn from that mistake and stay within the data bundle framework next time around, see also my next point...
Yotch said:
@ic: Surely if the SA operators really wanted us to believe that Telkom was the reason for the high data prices then the out of bundle rates would be very similar to the in bundle rates i.e. R2000+ per gigabyte out of bundle rate versus R289 for a one gigabyte bundle. Obviously these kind of rates have nothing to do with Telkom and are just a trick to boost profits. Can you think of another product or service where if you buy 10X the volume the unit price decreases to roughly 1/10 i.e. R2.00 per meg decreases to 29c?
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My current understanding is that there are major problems with relying on Telkodemonopolies to supply the necessary wired backhaul links for both Vodacom and MTN - we haven't really heard anything on this subject from CellC but I'm sure CellC has similar issues with Telkodemonopolies dragging its feet with CellC's 2G base-station links.

The sad bandwidth & broadband situation in SA is quite complex as a result of the entrenched monopoly that Telkodemonopolies still has over wired infrastructure, and Telkodemonopolies has little incentive to provision the backhaul links required by both Vodacom & MTN for their HSPA networks when these both compete head-on with Telkodemonopolies' ADSL, also factor in Telkodemonopolies' incompetence...

If you now put yourself into the shoes of both Vodacom and MTN, you should see that they have a real backhaul bandwidth shortage problem as a direct result of Telkodemonopolies, however both Vodacom and MTN have to compete with one another and Telkodemonopolies' ADSL and to a lesser extent iBurst, and then there is WiMax looming as well from Telkodemonopolies and maybe some day NeOTel, add to that the possibility that MWeb might get a WiMax licence, and it is clear that both Vodacom and MTN need to gain as much market as possible, i.e. they cannot afford to ignore the threat of looming competition.

So, why is it that both Vodacom and MTN have an OOBR? - IMO the answer is that the OOBR is used to discourage higher bandwidth usage due to the limited backhaul bandwidth problem.

When Vodacom has a considerable amount of its own fibre in the ground, we are likely to see the OOBR being considerably reduced or abolished altogether.
Yotch said:
I'm sure that the major reason why ICASA offered the 3G licenses cheaply was to encourage the growth of broadband in SA and so far the uptake has been well below what could have been achieved.
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I wish I could say such nice things about !CASA, unfortunately I cannot - !CASA might have something of a clue now - a few years after issuing licenses to SA's broadband network operators, but I am 100% sure that !CASA didn't have a clue back then, also !CASA was constrained by the Telecommunications and ICASA Acts in terms of its licensing, this changed last year when the Electronic Communications and ICASA Amendment Acts came into effect.
Yotch said:
In India for example (according to Neotel's website), there are 1.7 million new CDMA2000 data subscribers every month.
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I recommend reading the following news article to gain an insight into why SA will never see the sort of broadband growth that countries like India and China have [apart from the fact that their populations are the highest in the world]:
SA Internet access grows, but only for the haves...
Yotch said:
If Neotel are planning to offer a CDMA EVDO service I would expect that it will have to compete pricewise with ADSL which is currently being offered for ~R169 (1GB). I'm sure that HSDPA could also be supplied at similar or even lower rates. Some HSDPA networks in Europe continue to provide a 56Kbps service after reaching the bundle limit which could be another idea to reducing costs in SA i.e. offering discounted slower speed packages or reduced off peak rates.
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The only thing that will force broadband pricing down in SA, is increased and intensified competition.

So far NeOTel is looking a lot like another impotent & ineffectual CellC, by the time NeOTel actually commercially launches services for the general public to use, competition will probably have doubled - think Municipalities, Vodacom doing ADSL, WiMax as mentioned above...

IMO another of Ivy's & !CASA's biggest mistakes, was to approve NeOTel's licence having seen NeOTel's business plan for [wireless] CDMA2000, when NeOTel was supposed to be SA's Second [wired] Network Operator - basically the DoC & !CASA rubber-stamped NeOTel's wireless business plan instead of insisting that NeOTel should primarily concentrate on providing wired network infrastructure, i.e. fibre optic, so NeOTel's CDMA2000 EV-DOx1 service will probably be a lot like like Sentech's MyWireless - yet another wireless operator when SA really needs several wired competitors to break Telkodemonopolies' wired monopoly.

The more competition there is, the better it will be for consumers, with or without NeOTel :).

Down with the Grim Poisonous Ivyness Creep's [mis]managed [telecoms] liberalisation!!!

PS: I forgot to mention Telkodemonopolies' monopoly on international bandwidth via SAT-3 & SAFE...
 
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