SA falls in global technology rankings

SA falls in global technology rankings

FOR the sixth year running, SA has slid down the rankings of the world’s most technology-savvy countries, with a lack of government commitment to technology blamed for the deterioration.

Click to expand...

WTH! And here I thought we were growing the fastest.. Sheesh

At a separate event yesterday, Paris Mashile, chairman of telecoms regulator Icasa, said the government’s policy of granting Telkom a lengthy monopoly had done little to benefit consumers. “Thank God we now have competition,” he said.

Click to expand...

Where !?!?

Mobile broadband is still too expensive for the average Joe, why do they think Cell C is only offering EDGE. Neotel don't have national coverage and Telkom is still the only fixed line operator

I think he means... we have a competition commission... who can't do anything about the telecomms industry.. .but we still have a commission.

DigitalSoldier said:

Cell C is only offering EDGE. Neotel don't have national coverage and Telkom is still the only fixed line operator

Click to expand...

haha... when you put it into perspective like that no-one can argue...

I don't even have internet at home, and no amount of salary increases will ever push me to accept the fact that I have to pay almost a grand a month for "internet"...
We might see future price reductions with the new undersea cables and all, but that still leaves us with a huge brain drain problem that's only getting worse. How will we ever catch up if most people can't even spell their own names? aarghh... I hate articles like these that summarize and rank countries so easily. Every overseas person who reads this will now automatically look down on every person from SA he meets...

Maybe ranking yourself against others is meant to show you how you fare against them, and hopefully makes you wanna do better next time. I absolutely hate seeing 'us' fall against 'them' (regardless of what is compared) cos that means we're not moving forwards. We used to be a great nation once ..

DigitalSoldier said:

Where !?!?

Mobile broadband is still too expensive for the average Joe, why do they think Cell C is only offering EDGE. Neotel don't have national coverage and Telkom is still the only fixed line operator

Click to expand...

I Agree,

WHERE, At a separate event yesterday, Paris Mashile, chairman of telecoms regulator Icasa, said the government’s policy of granting Telkom a lengthy monopoly had done little to benefit consumers. “Thank God we now have competition,” he said.

Click to expand...

If it was not the government giving them a lengthy monopoly, Icasa also did by not standing up and being heard, so lets not only blame the government now oh dear PARIS MASHILE.

This is exactly the reason why we are soooo behind, everyone is too busy blaming, lets start taking responisbility for our stuff ups and fix the start with fixing the problem...... oh I fogot, there is no problem, just like there is no water crises etc etc etc.

Doesn't help you have to pay R500+ a month for 3 gig cap on 384 line. How many can really afford it.

Edit: With Local hosting being expensive... you can't even think about a high volume site example Facebook. Or create something intresting (because of expensive hosting).. and hosting international .... expensive bandwith!

evilstebunny said:

We used to be a great nation once ..

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that...

But anyway, ranking lists like these do absolutely nothing to convince anyone to work harder/better and make positive changes.
Rankings don't give advice, they don't give solutions, they don't do anything other than slapping a label on some subjective viewpoint as to what progress really is and how to measure it. I mean sure, there are some standards you can follow, but in judging a country on vacuous performance measures like these are pointless, since it doesn't take into account the struggles we've faced to get where we are. In light of the amount of corruption, poverty, dismal education etc. we have, it's not too hard to see that even if we do lack behind a bit, what we've accomplished so far is not that bad. We have a brain drain problem, yes, but we also have some companies in SA that are truly dynamic and cool in the way they address IT. I work for a relatively small data warehousing company, and even though I'm not involved in actual data warehousing I know that they don't stand back for any other company in the Southern hemisphere when it comes to the sheer size and expertise they throw at their projects. Fact is this country is now almost solely "competitive" when it comes to the private sector...any "rankings" that take government progress into account is useless....it's a bloody tragedy...and WE are the one's suffering because of it.

We were in the rankings? Wow! That's great coz I thought we didn't even exist!

"SA now ranks 52nd out of 134 countries in the WEF’s Global Information Technology Report, down from 51st last year"

well wtf did the government expect? they dont want to do anything about the extremely high broadband prices we get charged so why on earth would we ever grow...this just shows we are actually getting worse by the year

Some day we will dream of the good old days when we were in the top 100.

At a separate event yesterday, Paris Mashile, chairman of telecoms regulator Icasa, said the government’s policy of granting Telkom a lengthy monopoly had done little to benefit consumers.

Click to expand...

Hello Pot, this is Kettle.