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Oh and welcome to the internet... I see you haven't been online a lot... at all...
We constantly strive to bring value to our customers.
Uncapped at affordable pricing and accessibility to all has been unheard of in SA. Everyone that we have called in to help us develop our data/bandwidth plans have told us that it is impossible to do.
We disagreed.
We know that the pent up demand will peak right from the beginning and eventually subside when everyone works out that the Internet is just a big hard drive. We expect that to happen in a few months or when the users get tired of buying more storage.
The big guys have been quoted as saying that the price per gig can't come down below R40/gig until EASSY, WACS and other cables land.
Dall said that if IS has their way they would have uncapped DSL throughout. Current costing structures related to DSL however means that this is not feasible in the consumer ADSL market, and Dall pointed to issues like the cost for local IPConnect from Telkom as a prohibiting factor.
MTN SA CTO Sameer Dave also recently revealed that MTN is currently carrying 200 TB of monthly traffic on its network, up from 110 TB per month in early 2009. This significant growth gives a clear indication that there is strong bandwidth demand in South Africa, and Dave said that the challenge is to get the bandwidth to consumers.
We're not small in terms of bandwidth usage.
In conclusion:
This is a roller-coaster ride, but someone has to be brave enough to ride it. We appreciate the customers that are on this journey with us.
Its a GREAT ride. It may also be a painful ride, but one that we are determined to succeed in.
Potential customers can sit on the sidelines and watch us sort out issues. We need them to prove our business model. We will not take money from people we believe we are not delivering value to. The average chilli user is moving about 10 times or 1000% more than the average DSL user at a cost of R300. (This calc is based on an assumption that the average DSL user uses 5 Gigabyte a month.)
Sure, there are bumps. Even possibly catastrophic bumps.
'This is not time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.’
— Winston Churchill
‘Christopher Columbus:
Didn’t know where he was going.
Didn’t know where he was when he got there.
Didn’t know where he had been when he got back.
And did it all on borrowed capital.’
—Anon
I'm NOT saying:
We don't know where we're going.
We won't know when we get there.
We won't remember what we have done.
It is all borrowed capital.
Just another veil the ISP wants you to believe when they're having problems "with the upstream provider" (thats code for "OH **** WE CANT BELIEVE WE UNDERESTIMATED THE PUBLIC (again) AND WE DIDN'T PURCHASE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH, WE NEED TO MAKE ARRANGEMENTS NOW THAT MIGHT TAKE A COUPLE OF WEEKS BECAUSE OF CONTRACTS!)