Hi guys,
I'd like to warn you first that I am not a SA ADSL user (I live in france ;-)
Just wanted to give you some amo against the telkom-ocratie.
I read in "Africa Telecom" (i think, old issue) a very interesting article about international connection cablings in Africa with a focus on fibre optics cable laid down for South Africa.
Without going into the details the article noted that there are 3 ways to connect internationaly in South Africa (and austral africa in general):
- brute (RTC to a provider in the US or Europe) using international phone lines
- star (Satellite to US or Europe) but due to broadcasting rights in SA and cash concerns one cannot have upstream via sat (Mweb provided a offer thought, but the RTC made it slow and added dial costs, and it still passes by SAIX (SA's international bakebone, part of telkom)
-fiber optics, there are the favoured contenders are actualy massivly available and operational!!! (according to the article) thus the bandwith used in all of austral africa is actualy 1/10th of the available bandwith (I might be overstating but it is still huge). having worked at the World Summit last year, I can tell you that telkom / SAIX has used that bandwith (it was on par with European standards) but apparently on a limited time period.
So adsl in SA can be as enjoyable as in Europe, if SAIX is willing to broaden it's connection which would benifit all SA internet users (including from other ISP has they all have to use SAIX connection!), and would allow the adsl to be used as it's meant to be used.
My suggestion would be to lobby for an independant (private) internet backbone provider, which is illegal due to state monopoly on the market. (ONE CAN DREAM)
Hope it was informative and forgive my spelling.
@+
I'd like to warn you first that I am not a SA ADSL user (I live in france ;-)
Just wanted to give you some amo against the telkom-ocratie.
I read in "Africa Telecom" (i think, old issue) a very interesting article about international connection cablings in Africa with a focus on fibre optics cable laid down for South Africa.
Without going into the details the article noted that there are 3 ways to connect internationaly in South Africa (and austral africa in general):
- brute (RTC to a provider in the US or Europe) using international phone lines
- star (Satellite to US or Europe) but due to broadcasting rights in SA and cash concerns one cannot have upstream via sat (Mweb provided a offer thought, but the RTC made it slow and added dial costs, and it still passes by SAIX (SA's international bakebone, part of telkom)
-fiber optics, there are the favoured contenders are actualy massivly available and operational!!! (according to the article) thus the bandwith used in all of austral africa is actualy 1/10th of the available bandwith (I might be overstating but it is still huge). having worked at the World Summit last year, I can tell you that telkom / SAIX has used that bandwith (it was on par with European standards) but apparently on a limited time period.
So adsl in SA can be as enjoyable as in Europe, if SAIX is willing to broaden it's connection which would benifit all SA internet users (including from other ISP has they all have to use SAIX connection!), and would allow the adsl to be used as it's meant to be used.
My suggestion would be to lobby for an independant (private) internet backbone provider, which is illegal due to state monopoly on the market. (ONE CAN DREAM)
Hope it was informative and forgive my spelling.
@+
