Agreement That Cheap Broadband in SA is 'Unrealistic'

[bwana]

Great - a tech reporter that apparently doesnt know the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte?

 

[rsd]

Great - a tech reporter that apparently doesnt know the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte?

What irks me is even that if it WAS gigabit - that would be 128 megabytes. 128mb does not cost 50c from any isp that I'm aware of. As far as i know uunet sells bw for 9c per meg? (just as a random example to illustrate how unlikely it is that you can get 128mb for 50c anywhere...)

Bleh crap article, obviously no research done. Hope we get a response from the journalist.

 

[jeinnor30]

SA would not see the low prices enjoyed in Korea, where everyone lives in easy-to-connect high rise buildings, said Telkom's technical product development executive, Steve Lewis. "At the end of Africa putting in undersea cables costs money, which has to be recovered," he said.

I thought this cable was paid for long time ago ? Maybe I am missing the point on this one, but when a company is making a R 4.6 Billion rand profit, clearly they can bring down the pricing a lot even if it costs to roll out new cable etc. I also know that making a profit is the object of any business, but hey, lets be fair at it as well.

Telkom understood the need to make broadband available to everyone to boost the economy and improve education, the company said, and would continue to cut costs.

This is a new one, they have just said that "SA would not see the low prices enjoyed in Korea" and then they are saying that they "understood the need to make broadband available to everyone". This sounds like a big contradiction. If everyone is everyone, then we can expect and should see the low prices enjoyed in Korea because only then can broadband be made available and affordable to everyone. Yes, I know the article did not mention anything about making it affordable, but it goes without saying. Unless we give it to certain people for free, which is also ok, but lol, if Telkom is not going to give it cheaper, why on earth would they give it away.

 

[doobiwan]

Great - a tech reporter that apparently doesnt know the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte?

By my calculations they're confusing Gigs and Megs. It used to be R40000 for a gig (R40/meg = R2/50k package = old WAP billing) it's now 50c per Meg (R500 for a gig Voda/MTN)

 

[rsd]

How can a journalist make such a glaring error and WHY report on something you don't have a clue about!

*mutter*

 

[Peapod]

old story, if you cant win your argument by flooring them with facts, baffle them with bullsh1t.
this i think is the root of the telecomms debacle in SA. Man public is generally uninformed or so bombarded with confusing and conflicting information he is unable to make any decision or have any informed opinion...the telecomms "rapists" rely on this and push it to the nth degree to keep it that way thus getting away with the market plunder their shareholders and directors have come to rely on.
sickening. there must be some way of taking a clear and unabiguous message to the masses, there must be some way that we as a consumer body can educate and informe the man in the street in such a way as to educate him without hi being intimidated by techie talk, and so that he is empowered to DO something about the situation. I am scratching my head for ideas...have been for a long time. any bright sparks out there with any ideas?

 

[Kalvaer]

Besides all the inconsistencies in that article.

"The size of the country we have to cover is vastly bigger than any European country, yet they have more subscribers. But the more subscribers we get the more economies of scale work in favour for lower prices,"

and then

When lower prices, increased geographic coverage and faster speeds of new technologies were taken into consideration, broadband internet access was now 17000 times more accessible in SA than it had been 18 months ago,

Increased coverage, YES, Faster speeds, yes, Lower prices, NO.

Vodacom and MTN may have slashed their prices but telkom has hardly done so at all, Almost everything nowdays with relation to telekoms is Service +Telkom Rates, When are telkom going to come to the party? If access is now 17000 times greater than 18 months ago? Why have the number of broadband subscribers not increased by 17000 times to bring there economies of scale argument into practice?

From What I can see its because they have spent the money on the the technology, and they want to make their money back first.. then make a large profit on it, and then maybe reduce the prices, Though if they dropped the prices first you would get the same effect.. or am i wrong?

 

[Nod]

Business in SA haven't cought on to the simple principle that if you want mass uptake of a product you might have to be willing to make a loss for the first few months. After that economy of scale would give you the profits you want. But in good old SA, companies in general want to make a (big) profit from day one. They then complain that they can't provide the service anymore because there is no demand for that service. Of course there is no demand because the prices are too high, but they can't catch on to this, even if market research say that there is a huge market, they'll just try to make a huge profit.

Take any product (cameras, PC parts, etc.) that needs to be imported, and you'll get this "problem".

Feel better now, thanks for listening

 

[Sneeky]

Well business is the money spinner for Telkom, so that has to be the target.
Perhaps a detailed letter to the financial directors of the top 100 companies in South Africa, highlighting to them somehow how they are being ripped off, and advising them of new technologies that can potentialy save them millions of rands per annum.
Sasol must spend a fortune on telecoms, and they are also the biggest single tax payer in SA, starting point?
Hell form a small telecoms consulting company and grab a piece of the savings as a consulting fee, MyAdsl will be on the JSE in no time.

 

[TheRoDent]

I've whipped up a rough "The Journo's guide to Bits and Bytes" on my site: http://rodent.za.net/TheJournosGuideToGigsAndBytes

Scrutinize and point out any obvious stuffups please. I want it to to be as accurate a "real world guide" as can be.

 

[Sneeky]

I managed to contact the news desk at Business Day and spoke to Daniel.
I emailed him a link asking him to just verify the facts of the report.
He was most helpful and will check the article out and if necessary will get a correction in for Monday he says.

 

[Valerion]

I've whipped up a rough "The Journo's guide to Bits and Bytes" on my site: http://rodent.za.net/TheJournosGuideToGigsAndBytes

Scrutinize and point out any obvious stuffups please. I want it to to be as accurate a "real world guide" as can be.

Very nice article, and I am sure it will be helpful. However, I suggest you also include the information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix in this, as it is in use on several places on the net already.

 

[antowan]

Total BS!

 

[bwana]

I've whipped up a rough "The Journo's guide to Bits and Bytes" on my site: http://rodent.za.net/TheJournosGuideToGigsAndBytes

Scrutinize and point out any obvious stuffups please. I want it to to be as accurate a "real world guide" as can be.

Nicely done - though I would elaborate on the "There's also a further BINARY expression of bits" caveat. Telkom uses the binary expression which is oddly enough beneficial to the consumer. In their FAQ section they state:

The proper defintion of a Gigabyte according to international standards is one thousand million bytes (3 000 000 000). A Megabyte is one million bytes (1 000 000) and a kilobyte (1 000). However, in computer terms, it has become common to refer to a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, a Megabyte as 1024x1024 (1 048 576) bytes and a Gigabyte as 1024x1024*1024 (1 073 741 824) bytes. Telkom has chosen to use the latter definition for a GigaByte.

There's a nice online calculator I like to use.

 

[biltonguy]

What an infuriating article! it doesnt suprise me the cosy little telecom club all agree on keeping prices high.

Ill tell you whats keeping prices high - LACK OF C_O_M_P_E_T_I_T_I_O_N!!

but its been said a million times before here, and its all taking so long as SA loses out....

 

[ettubrute]

Second reason for high prices: shareholders having only a very short-term vision, namely to grab as much as possible, as fast as possible, and bugger the long-term.

 

[Perdition]

"megabit line it means that his line can transfer roughly 1000 * 1000 * 1000 bits per second."

1000 * 1000 * 1000 = gigabit

"and that his disk can store 10 * 1000 * 1000 * 10 bytes"

One of those 10's needs to go.

 

[kifoth]

Cellphone charges vs broadband charges

I keep reading the following as a justification for high prices...

... the more subscribers we get the more economies of scale work in favour for lower prices ...

Shouldn't the response be: "What, just like cellphone rates?"

 

[TheRoDent]

Perdition, thanks for the updates.

 

[Roman4604]

Your dealing with binary data (decimals e.g. 10, 1000 etc. are not divisible) therefore ...

1024 bits = 1 Kbits
1024 Kbits = 1 Mbits
1024 Mbits = 1 Gbits

To get to Bytes divide any bits number by 8