Questions to conference speakers

[rpm]

Originally Posted by Gekco

Why just not give a list of all questions to the speakers in advance?That way they will be 100% prepared and will not have to field any unexpected questions./sarc

There will be questions from the floor, but we want to give guys who cant attend the event a chance to ask some questions as well.

[mikef]

Originally Posted by Gekco

To all:

Why just not give a list of all questions to the speakers in advance?
That way they will be 100% prepared and will not have to field any unexpected questions.
/sarc

No harm in them being prepared - it increases the chance of getting a meaningful researched answer as opposed to a quick thumb-suck.

[Lightscribe]

SESSION 1, 10:00 Cutting telecoms and interconnect prices
John Holdsworth, ECN Telecoms

Q: What have you done/are doing/plan to do, to ensure definite price cuts, for real "no threshold", "no fair usage policy", shaped and unshaped, uncapped services at various speeds?

11:00 Broadband Panel Discussion hosted by Brian Neilson
Doug Reed, Vox Telecom
Matthew Tagg, Web Africa
Andries Delport, Vodacom
Jannie van Zyl, iBurst
Angus Hay, Neotel

Q: What have each of you individually, done/are doing/plan to do, to ensure definite price cuts, for real "no threshold", "no fair usage policy", shaped and unshaped, uncapped services at various speeds?

SESSION 2, 3:30 Bandwidth In SA Panel Discussion hosted by Duncan McLeod
Suveer Ramdhani, SEACOM
Johan Meyer, Telkom & SAT-3/SAFE
Kobus Stroeder, WACS
Sameer Dave, MTN
Malcolm Kirby, Dark Fibre Africa

Q: What have each of you individually, done/are doing/plan to do, to ensure definite price cuts, for real "no threshold", "no fair usage policy", shaped and unshaped, uncapped services at various speeds?

14:30 Regulatory, ISP & Wireless Network Discussion hosted by Rudolph Muller
Ant Brooks, ISPA
Dominic Cull, Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions
Dawie Joubert, PTAWUG
Roelf Diedericks, Neology
Royden Dall, Internet Solutions

Q: Rudolph and Dominic excluded, what have each of you individually, done/are doing/plan to do, to ensure definite price cuts, for real "no threshold", "no fair usage policy", shaped and unshaped, uncapped services at various speeds?

[Kaufies]

Matthew Tagg, Web Africa

As I understand it, Web Africa is now essentially a "first tier" ISP. What implications is this going to have for private individual consumers? Are said consumers going to play a large, meaningful role in your business or will you use your new network to cater primarily to corporate clients and resellers.

Matthew Tagg, Web Africa

Assuming private individual consumers are a large part of your new network, are you going to apply cost structures similar to those of other ISPs even though you no longer pay "per gig" or will your cost structures (aimed at the average consumer) be less conventional?

[Gekco]

Originally Posted by mikef

No harm in them being prepared - it increases the chance of getting a meaningful researched answer as opposed to a quick thumb-suck.

You mean get a good PR spin prepared well in advance?

[davemc]

11H00 - Andries Delport, Vodacom

*When is Vodacom planning to no longer be reliant on the Telkom infrastructure?
What portion of Vodacom's profits are allocated towards achieving this aim?
Why is there such a large difference in price between Vodacom to Cell C interconnect rates, and Vodacom to Telkom interconnect rates?
Why does Vodacom send unsolicited spam messages to their own customers?

The * one is extremely important. Vodacom has been using Telkom as an excuse for long enough now, time for some real facts.

[metalcore]

Thanks RPM

John Holdsworth:

If broadband pricing does eventually get reduced, how can we know that the ISP's won't keep pricing inflated in order to get better profit margins?

Suveer Ramdhani:

When will the benefits of SEACOM finally filter down to the end user in terms of tangible price reductions or at the very least much better speeds and lower latencies. Why is it not happening what are the reasons that the ISPs and Telkom aren't embracing the extra capacity and passing it on to consumers. Are they lying to the public?

I think that the consumer is getting tired of hearing promises

[ushir]

Angus Hay, Neotel

Why to date is there no usage monitoring available on Neotel? What progress is being made to get this to users?

What are your views on the progress of wireless connectivity to consumers? Do you see neotel actively pursuing WiMax for residential consumers or will the focus be more aimed at EVDO?

[Sackboy]

Dear Andries Delport, Vodacom:

"When will Vodacom be joining WASPA so that we can actually opt-out of SPAM?"

[ushir]

Ant Brooks, ISPA

What are your views on Net Neutrality in this country? How do you see South Africa reacting to this new buzz-word?

[ushir]

John Holdsworth, ECN Telecoms:

What are your views on mobile operators in South Africa adopting a model used by mobile operators in the U.S.A where calls and text message are charged on an incoming and outgoing basis?

[adamastor]

Givern that the Telkom Caps stay in place and therefore the network utilization stays constant, can't they at least increase the SPEED?

[eridanus]

to Andries Delport, Vodacom

Why does vodacom continue to spam their customers after members sms "STOP" to unsubscribe?

[nfbs]

I suspect we're going to hear how great SA internet environment is and how change is a coming etc.
We have 3 undersea cables SAT West,SAT East and Seacom affordable prices should be here.

Let's make it interesting.

SA Internet Knowledge Question to all South Africans (Service providers, ICASA, DoC, Users etc)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
MyBroadband Exam Question. Duration 1 hour.
Answer either scenario A or B or both
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

John is an unemployed South African IT contract worker impacted by the global recession.
John realizes his knowledge is in old technology skills and subsequently cannot find employment in his skills area.
John can afford being unemployed for a couple of months but does not have a lot of money for none essential expenses and is reluctant to go over his budget of R500 (80 USD) per month for internet for the months he is unemployed.

While researching his options he found his best option would be online training courses which he can afford.

John identified 2 online training courses in the latest technologies that a market shortage exists in (Scenario 1 and Scenario 2)

Scenario 1 - Once off 10Gb usage for 1 month only
John identified an online training course that suits his needs.
John buys the course and gets given a login id and password. To his dismay he finds he has to download 10Gb of training videos for the course on his laptop and there is no postal option.
-John needs to download 10Gb data for 1 month only.
-He has no internet infrastructure or telephone line but has a 3G enabled cellular phone and a cable he can use to connect to his laptop.
-He enquired with his service provider and the cheapest he could get the data for is a MyGig 10 for R2000 which is out of his budget.
-He doesn't mind if it takes him 1 week to download or if he downloads it after hours so speed it not a problem.
-Coverage is also not a problem as he is willing to use his car to drive to any place with good coverage.
-John only wants internet for one month and is not interested in signing a contract for longer.
-He is unsure if he needs to use or signup for ADSL, WiFI, CDMA, wimax, 3G for a month.

What would you advise John to do?

Scenario 2 - 10Gb per month for 3 months only
John identified an online training course that suits his needs.
John buys the course and gets given a login id and password. To his dismay he finds he would be required to use about 10Gb data usage per month (because of donwloadable training videos) for the duration of his 3 month course.
-John needs to download 10Gb data per month for 3 months only.
-He has no internet infrastructure or telephone line but has a 3G enabled cellular phone and a cable he can use to connect to his laptop.
-He enquired with his service provider and the cheapest he could get the data for is a MyGig 10 for R2000 per month, so his total cost would be R6000 for internet usage for the 3 month course which is out of his budget.
-He doesn't mind if he use the internet after hours and doesn't require it immediately so speed it not a problem.
-Coverage is also not a problem as he is willing to use his car to drive to any place with good coverage.
-John only wants to use internet for three month and is not interested in signing a contract for longer.
-He is unsure if he needs to use or signup for ADSL, WiFI, CDMA, wimax, 3G for the 3 months

What would you advise John to do?

[nfbs]

1.Before Seacom landed it was being sold as cheap broadband.
Now that it is here because of the usual suspects shareholding in both SAT3 and Seacom it is not seen as competition but motivated and sold like an electricity generator to ISPs. Instead of just buying the electricity (SAT3) you get the generator (Seacom) as backup in case the electricity goes down. The same thing that happend with Sat 3 East and west.
Comments?

2. How about half price 3G internet from 9 to 6 after hours to match ADSL bandwidth prices? Is this viable and possible?