DoC study highlights expensive local telecoms services

Surely a study was not needed.
And now that they have the results; What do they intend doing with it?
 
If you don't know how to do your job, do some research.

Then, if you still don't know to how to do you job, do some more research.

And finally, if you still don't know how to do your job, just keep researching until the next clueless minister gets appointed.
 
How did South Korea get to be in this study?

Fibre is the dominant connection technology in Korea and now accounts for 43% of all broadband subscriptions in Korea. South Korea has the highest fibre penetration rate worldwide at 13.8 fibre subscribers per 100 inhabitants with typical speeds of 50 Mbps or higher.
Click to expand...

They're way out of our league, in fact, way out of league of any of the other countries in this comparison.

In any case, if the DoC commissioned this report, and they do publish its findings openly (I'm assuming it isn't, yet), then this will be a first. Something positive going ahead. If they can at least admit and understand how far behind we are, we a have a tiny glimmer of hope.
 
I think essentially the problem is that the middle class market at which broadband access is aimed is just too small in South Africa in terms of absolute numbers to have any effect on pricing.

If you look at other countries with similar socio-economic conditions as South Africa such as Brazil and India, their broadband market is much bigger than South Africa's. India may only have a penetration rate of 7.1% but they have almost a 7th of the world's population. Likewise not only has Brazil got an enormous population relative to South Africa, but their penetration rate is 34.4%.

There's just not enough incentive in the South African market at the moment for true competition with often blatant collusion occurring between "competitors" resulting in laughable costs for bandwidth still measured in the megabytes in a world that has long moved on to gigabytes.

Consumers cannot, yet, vote with their feet like they can in other countries while our ADSL market is held hostage by Telkom and our mobile internet market is dominated by Vodacom and MTN who miraculously charge almost exactly the same for their data bundles.
 
Like !casa, isn't the DoC required to do anything instead of mindless studies?

Yesterday !casa gets taken to task for not doing their job.
 
Well it's a step in the right direction if you ask me. Usually they just denied everything or gave excuses ("there is no crisis"). This study was straight forward and showed that there is a problem, so now the DoC will hopefully do something about it.
 
Me thinks these idiots just needs to read myBB more often
 
What surprises me is that this is an annual study. In my line of work we have been analysing these reports for years and coming to the same conclusions.

The curve ball in this report is the inclusion of South Korea... Smallish geographic layout in terms of population density.

Effectively they are saying that they have been receiving it for the last 10 years but have done nothing about it.

What will be different this time?
 
are they actually noticing that "broadband" is bad in this country or are they just saying so to appease some of the masses?
 
9 percent market penetration, that 9 percent of the populace is paying enough to make up for a 60 percent market penetration profit figure.

- remember that.
 
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