Cheaper Internet access is coming soon

[flarkit]

I want to make an appeal to you guys not to post your negativity anymore, but rather to use your posts to demand change. I am fearful that all of the IBIWISI posts and "This is South Africa" and "it will never happen" are all going to hijack our lower prices!

The operators will turn around and use your negativity to justify their pricing structures.

Instead of posting "things will never change"... from now on I want you to post "we demand change".

Instead of posting "prices will not come down" ... post "We demand that prices come down"

There is no more excuse for poor service or inflated prices. If being negative makes you satisfied, then you deserve the high prices.

I for one am sick of them and I demand lower prices. Seacom is in a position to give that to us... no more excuses!!!

If you agree, then please quote this entire post!

I agree! Say it again, brother-man! Bring on the change! It has to happen! It WILL happen! Say it with me now:

Faster speeds, bigger caps and no price increases!
Faster speeds, bigger caps and no price increases!
Faster speeds, bigger caps and no price increases!​

I don't have that much hope for Sainet though, they've been very static until their latest reshuffling which just pushed all of their prices up from being the best to less than average. And they don't even have local cap.

But whoever actually gets to some better prices first is my new ISP.

No complaints with SAINET here, but they need to catch a wake up, or we're jumping ship too, faster than you can say "month-to-month contract, baby. Aha-Aha!"

 

[Tegnik]

Letter from Amobia:

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for your informative letter regarding your anticipation
towards the influence of the new Seacom link on the SA ISP market. We
are also very excited with the new options it might bring to our
connectivity market.

As the leading WISP, we will be testing these new options thoroughly.

Please consult our web site in the months to come, to see the real
market effect.

Regards
Amobia Sales

 

[LazyLion]

Letter from Amobia:

Translation = "We are nowhere near ready, your questions caught us off guard, please go away and come back later when we have made some phone calls to find out what this Seacom is all about!"

 

[Thestealth]

Translation = "We are nowhere near ready, your questions caught us off guard, please go away and come back later when we have made some phone calls to find out what this Seacom is all about!"

Lol!! So true...

 

[Tegnik]

Translation = "We are nowhere near ready, your questions caught us off guard, please go away and come back later when we have made some phone calls to find out what this Seacom is all about!"

I was thinking the same thing. Its a shame really. But I tried to join the cause, and that is all that matters, doesn't it?

So for me:

Cybersmart and Amobia are 1 down so far.

Having high hopes for other ISPs at the moment. I will keep the company and friends informed.

 

[MyWorld]

I doubt we will hear anything from Telkom, I mailed them yesterday morning, go a read receipt that they accepted the mail, but nothing so far.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I doubt we will hear anything from Telkom, I mailed them yesterday morning, go a read receipt that they accepted the mail, but nothing so far.

Well they wouldn't tell you anything very interesting anyway I'm sure. What was interesting from them is the Sainet CEO saying he was in a meeting where they said they'll either follow suite with Secom pricing or rather lead. (From the Sainet reply ld13 posted a page back)

 

[Tegnik]

Well they wouldn't tell you anything very interesting anyway I'm sure. What was interesting from them is the Sainet CEO saying he was in a meeting where they said they'll either follow suite with Secom pricing or rather lead. (From the Sainet reply ld13 posted a page back)

I'd prefer it if they follow suite.

 

[Sting]

I repeat... you will not hear anything from Telkom until 22 June as they are in a closed period.

 

[MyWorld]

Well, I do not care if they lead or follow suite, the more competition the better.

 

[Pooky]

WE DEMAND CHANGE!!!

I want to got to Telkom and give them R200 for 10gigs, and get R101.50 back!!! That's more change than I paid for the 10gigs!!!!!

WOW!

 

[air]

sorry if has posted before, from http://www.seacom.mu/faq/faq.html

How will SEACOM make money?

Let us use an analogy to illustrate this. Look at a high-rise building which is the equivalent of the cable. You have the ability to sell multiple units and each one of those units is the procurement of bandwidth by a customer. In the early years, SEACOM will only sell say 20 percent of them and this will serve to recover the project costs until we pass the break-even line. The remaining units will then move SEACOM into the profitable category. You can also do a combination of selling and leasing, as you would with condo apartments.

Typically, what happens in telecoms is that prices go down as volumes go up. Over time, customers may be spending the same amount of money, but they're always securing more capacity, because the unit pricing is coming down. SEACOM's unit price from day one has been 90 to 95 percent cheaper than the equivalent unit price of satellite. Going forward, it will continue to lower as the volumes go up.

Some people are saying that the price of broadband won't come down as dramatically as people hope. It will depend on many factors. There are three parts to getting the service to the end user. One is the last-miles solution, and that can be DSL, 3G or WIMAX. Second is the national network, which is made of different backbones that can be microwave, fiber optics or satellite regional transmission. The final element is international bandwidth, which can be submarine fiber optic cables or satellite transmission. SEACOM is focused on the last one and will bring that price down by 90 to 95 percent.

That leaves the other two components, which also need to come down in price. In many countries, the national backbone and the last mile connectivity aren't as robust or adequate as the end user would like them to be. When SEACOM brings down the international bandwidth cost substantially, it economically justifies further investment into these other two components, national and last mile. SEACOM can be seen as a catalyst for these other investments.

 

[Wimbo]

Well if Laurie or anyone would like to confirm/figure out what kind of savings most "MyADSL-type" customers can look for, say in a 10GB international package?

ZERO saving. Most "MyADSL-type" customers buy their connection from ISPs who resell Telkom's ADSL products. Telkom hasn't bought into SEACOM. Telkom has not made known any intention to reduce their prices.

They have, however, reduced their price around August in several of the recent years. They may do so again. Who knows?

Well then too bad for the other ISP's if someone can afford a direct pipe and the IRU agreement with Seacom.

Some of us are on the ball enough to be busy getting this organised ;-)

However, time is short, money is short, and we can only buy in units of 155 Mbps at a price of $3,400,000 each.

 

[Wimbo]

all that I've been hearing these years is that it's expensive because of international bandwidth - that's what they have ALWAYS said
now it's only a tiny part of the high price problem
what gives?

No, that's what Telkom have always said. Telkom has justified their high prices - and the existence of ADSL caps - on the "high price of international bandwidth".

Remember, these are the same people who won't peer with most SA ISPs because they'd far rather we paid them $400 for a 64 kbps IPLC when their cost was $25 (figures from a few years ago).

It's been said before, but worth repeating: until very recently it was cheaper to get a big pipe to London via Cape Town than to get the same size connection just to Cape Town, from Joburg. How does that make any sense, unless you consider: (1) no local competition (until now); (2) significant foreign competition. Exactly the same principle applies to voice call costs: Telkom has been reducing international costs and raising local costs.

International connectivity is only a small part of the cost of providing service to customers.

 

[LazyLion]

ZEROTelkom hasn't bought into SEACOM.

How do you know that? Can you confirm this? The rumour is that they have bought an STM1. And they would be crazy not to have bought space on Seacom. With the world cup around the corner and with the next cable still six months to a year away, they would be very foolish not to provision extra bandwidth.

 

[Wimbo]

How do you know that? Can you confirm this? The rumour is that they have bought an STM1.

I asked SEACOM. I confirmed it with SEACOM, on Monday. I will also ask Telkom at my next meeting with them.

I'm not saying that things haven't changed since Monday, but don't believe rumours!

And they would be crazy not to have bought space on Seacom. With the world cup around the corner and with the next cable still six months to a year away, they would be very foolish not to provision extra bandwidth.

They would be crazy to buy an STM-1. If they did buy capacity, they'd buy an STM-64 at least - the price per Mbps is much lower.

They have plenty of bandwidth on SAT-3 - a significant slice of 120 Gbps, ~= 12 x STM-64. They also have capacity on two other new cables to come.

 

[LazyLion]

I asked SEACOM. I confirmed it with SEACOM, on Monday. I will also ask Telkom at my next meeting with them.

I thought Seacom were not allowed to comment on their tenants?

They would be crazy to buy an STM-1. If they did buy capacity, they'd buy an STM-64 at least - the price per Mbps is much lower.

They have plenty of bandwidth on SAT-3 - a significant slice of 120 Gbps, ~= 12 x STM-64. They also have capacity on two other new cables to come.

If they have plenty of bandwidth on SAT-3 then why are we still capped and paying through our noses? Will you ask them that?

 

[MyWorld]

WE DEMAND CHANGE!!!

I want to got to Telkom and give them R200 for 10gigs, and get R101.50 back!!! That's more change than I paid for the 10gigs!!!!!

WOW!

That made me lol.

 

[ponder]

The rumour is that they have bought an STM1.

Wow, a whole 155Mb/s for all their subscribers? ROTFLMAO

 

[Tegnik]

I asked SEACOM. I confirmed it with SEACOM, on Monday. I will also ask Telkom at my next meeting with them.

I'm not saying that things haven't changed since Monday, but don't believe rumours!



They would be crazy to buy an STM-1. If they did buy capacity, they'd buy an STM-64 at least - the price per Mbps is much lower.

They have plenty of bandwidth on SAT-3 - a significant slice of 120 Gbps, ~= 12 x STM-64. They also have capacity on two other new cables to come.

Funny this. I thought Telkom were upposed to be the leading company to handle 2010. Aren't they provisioning enough bandwidth to be able to broadcast HD? I smell a rat.

You say don't believe rumours, and what I am seeing from your post seems to be a rumour.