Don't Expect Miracles

[mcleodd]

Yet another SNOTty question that needs an answer [from guavamint ], is whether SNOT will ever get guavamint assisted access to the Melkbosstrand SAT-3 landing station [without having to pay Telkodemonopolies that is], otherwise what's the point of SNOT selling ISPs access to SNOT's national fibre backbone when there's no route to the outside world [i.e. no international packets travelling through it]...

My understanding is that, in terms of the Sat-3 consortium agreement, Telkom will face competition on the cable for the first time from April next year. The SNO and Sentech (as international gateway licensees) will no longer be required to purchase a notional half-circuit from Telkom and will now be able to purchase an entire circuit from any consortium member. I haven't seen the consortium agreement (very few people have) so I stand to be corrected. If anyone is this forum knows anything more about this agreement and what exactly happens in April 2007, I'd be very interested to learn more.

Duncan

 

[pupa]

My understanding is that, in terms of the Sat-3 consortium agreement, Telkom will face competition on the cable for the first time from April next year. The SNO and Sentech (as international gateway licensees) will no longer be required to purchase a notional half-circuit from Telkom and will now be able to purchase an entire circuit from any consortium member. I haven't seen the consortium agreement (very few people have) so I stand to be corrected. If anyone is this forum knows anything more about this agreement and what exactly happens in April 2007, I'd be very interested to learn more.

Duncan

Problem is that all three mentioned have GVT as shareholders or Private shareholders in positions of GVT, so there is the crux of the matter. Smell a rat yet?

 

[disabled]

'X' decides to open up a take away business leasing a piece of ground from 'Z' across the road who has been running a take away business for years.... ''X' sells his take aways for a certain % less than 'Y'...'Y''s customers start buying from 'X' ...Does anyone honestly think that 'Z' would allow this to pass without a flick of the eye?...What do you think the outcome would be in the end?...Any Comments?

 

[antowan]

IOW guavamint should send a SANDF platoon to Melkbosstrand and just take over the SAT-3 landing station and tell SNOT and Verizon SA|Business and Telkodemonopolies to play nice

Government has got more than enough cash to lay a hundred "public" cables to the States and Europe. The issue is important enough for government to probably be at liberty to do this... Why are we suffering this stupid cable ownership issue? Fuggem! Lay another one to even compete with Eassy. A straight (For South Africa ONLY) cable to the rest of the developed world.

 

[bwana]

Duncan, should 'now' have been 'then' [as in from April 2007]?

Given that DMoCk Roy has made a big deal over guavamint [Telkodemonopolies' sinlge largest shareholder] not being allowed [by Telkodemonopolies] to see the SAT-3 bandwidth illuminati agreement, guavamint is IMO not bound by this agreement and what Telkodemonopolies claims the agreement says [we all know that the beast lies constantly, why would Telkodemonopolies tell the truth about the contents of this secret agreement]...

Can someone please explain to me how the government doesnt know exactly what the agreement consists of? When telkom entered into the agreement they were a government parasatal. Did the government just say – here's X millions of rands dont tell us what you're going to do with it???

 

[Sneeky]

its all for the people folks, they said so.

 

[pupa]

its all for the people folks, they said so.

Mmmm..I did not know all the PPL fits in the back pockets!

 

[Roman4604]

I don't understand:

• Why the market is still so closed?
  
• Why the SNO is mostly a foreign owned company?
  
• Why just the Indian investment? Where are the local companies who want to compete? Surely there must be enough willing players for a TNO and FNO?
  
• Where is the regulator in all of this? We know our regulator is a bit of a piss willy organization, but this is getting out of hand. If the regulator was worth its salt the SNO wouldn't even have dared to make shifty statements about pricing like these...
  
• What is going on in the DoC? Isn't it perhaps time for a presedential inquest as to who owns part of what and where? Something is amis and it is reflected in the ultra slow pace of change...

Haven't you heard .... it's to protect us from the effects of a tsunami.

My understanding is that, in terms of the Sat-3 consortium agreement, Telkom will face competition on the cable for the first time from April next year. The SNO and Sentech (as international gateway licensees) will no longer be required to purchase a notional half-circuit from Telkom and will now be able to purchase an entire circuit from any consortium member. I haven't seen the consortium agreement (very few people have) so I stand to be corrected. If anyone is this forum knows anything more about this agreement and what exactly happens in April 2007, I'd be very interested to learn more.

Duncan

Sounds right ... according to what I've heard from the SNO ... after April 2007 thay will have unrestricted access to SAT3 capacity.

 

[TonyA]

I failed economics 101!. My understanding of the SNO and business in general is that they are there to make money, service to customers and consumers is irrelevant. Service ethics seem to be none existent in RSA.

 

[internaut]

...Of particular interest to Pandey and his management team is the telecom infrastructure owned by shareholders Transnet and Eskom Enterprises, which together own 30% of SNO Telecom...

Transnet
Transnet Limited is a public company with the South African government as its sole shareholder.

Eskom
The ownership of Eskom vests in the South African government.

Looks like no cheap telecoms here people.

 

[Prometheus]

When Telkom was privatised the stipulation was to provide access to telephony services to rural communities. Telkom has never lived up to that part of the agreement so it became the main stipulation for a SNO. In reality there was never any thought on the governments mind about cheaper communications. The fact is that you people came up with the idea of the SNO competing with Telkom on your own. Afaik the SNO has always maintained that it will not compete head-on with Telkom, but will instead provide services where Telkom didn't provide services.

My understanding is that, in terms of the Sat-3 consortium agreement, Telkom will face competition on the cable for the first time from April next year.

April 2007? What the hell will that help? EASSy lands here Q3 2007. We need freely accessed international access now. Not in 2007 when it will arrive anyway.

I still say get rid of the government shares in the industry. Or maybe even better. Bring all parties in front of the competition commission while they have high charges on their agenda. Even better still will be to abolish ICASA and in its place set up a publicly owned non-profit organisation and forbid anyone that has a stake in any part of the communications industry from being part of said organisation (e.g. government).

 

[bwana]

I still say get rid of the government shares in the industry. Or maybe even better. Bring all parties in front of the competition commission while they have high charges on their agenda. Even better still will be to abolish ICASA and in its place set up a publicly owned non-profit organisation and forbid anyone that has a stake in any part of the communications industry from being part of said organisation (e.g. government).

Gotta wonder if any of what you quite rightly mentioned will ever happen - government being the control freaks that they are.

EDIT - If you dont like the term control freaks feel free to substitute it with money-grubbing-power-whores.

 

[Prometheus]

Gotta wonder if any of what you quite rightly mentioned will ever happen - government being the control freaks that they are.

That is why government shouldn't be given a choice.

AFAIK the licence that !CASA issued to SNOT requires that SNOT provides services to some under-serviced areas, I very much doubt that SNOT had any incentive to ask !CASA to have that condition added to the terms & conditions of the licence...

I actually meant stipulation there, don't know why I chose incentive, I corrected it now.

Why do you post "you people"? - who are the "you people" in this context? - if you mean MyADSL's forumites, I would have to disagree - was it not guavamint & her Poisonous Ivyness [with her "managed liberalisation" junk] that decided to do the SNOT thing [after several years of delay] instead of fully opening up & liberalising the telecoms market [from mono-duo-polistic legislation]???

Yes, I do actually refer to the forumites. Poisonous Ivyness might have decided to do the "managed liberalisation" thing. But we all know that we and government use two completely different dictionaries. So what was said by government and what was actually meant is two completely different things. The reason for the SNO's existance is still to provide services to under-serviced areas. My point is that people set themselves up for disappointment when it comes to government promises. I don't know why I ever thought that the SNO could actually make a difference. I can kick myself for it. I now go back to my previous belief - deregulate the entire industry so that every Tom, D1ck and Harry can start their own telecommunications company. There will certainly be a few failures along the way, but things will get done very quickly.

 

[Prometheus]

Ok, I get what you're saying, just bear in mind that we all have different opinions - I think 'some forumites' would be more accurate than referencing all forumites .

Ok, with you on that one. It just seemed that it was the general hope that the SNO was going to change the landscape. It has become clear that this is a false hope based on the SNO's own statements. If we want change we will have to force change. The end of the word will be here quicker (it's predicted for 2012) if things are left up to government.

 

[MaD]

Excuse me if this sounds incredibly stupid - but what happened about the plans for BPL? No data/voice over powerlines anymore? It's being trialled successfully in a few places already, so surely the Telkom killer would be a working BPL service?

Almost everyone in the country has electricity, even squatter camps - the areas Telkom has avoided like the Rinderpest - so surely the easiest, fastest (although probably not most cost-effective in the very short term) way to get ahead would be to reach to the customers through existing infrastructure. LLU would probably not be nearly as urgent then, but obviously interconnection charges betweeb the SNO/Telkom would have to be given the hairy eyeball.

Apologies if this has been mentioned earlier in the thread, haven't read through the whole thing yet

 

[Gooku]

Excuse me if this sounds incredibly stupid - but what happened about the plans for BPL? No data/voice over powerlines anymore? It's being trialled successfully in a few places already, so surely the Telkom killer would be a working BPL service?

M8

Personaly I think BPL is dead , They have missed the last windows of opportunity even in SA.- it does not have the economy of scale to make the end user device (modem )cheap enough .

Wireless is the future, I think in SA we will have to leap pass the ADSL and straight into 2.5g, 3G or Wimax to look for affordability.

BPL have no chance to give us the price we want.


:^_)

 

[Prometheus]

From what I've heard power line communications are somewhat unreliable and also has their teething problems, even more so than WiMax as I understand. Probably because all power networks are different you can't just use equipment out of the box and the speeds are always somewhat slower than current available technologies.

The real problem we still have however is that we don't have the infrastructure to carry the data to the rest of the world. Telkom would still be in the loop and that will only make the technology more expensive to use. This wouldn't solve our more immediate problems imo. Unless we can somehow hook up a power line to Her Ivynesses favourite doughnut eating chair (evil thoughts come to mind again).

There's no reason why South Africans should have to be content with that which the rest of the world no longer wants. We don't want the stuff that other countries cannot get working. We want real broadband at real prices, and there's only one way we can get it. Force them to give it.

 

[Prometheus]

ic: I don't know exactly what you're saying here, but if my acronym memory is correct then POE stands for Power Over Ethernet. POE adds a power line over two of your existing ethernet wires so that you can hook up a network of devices without requiring any external power sources. Afaik this power line is low voltage and direct current and cannot be mixed or compared with mains circuitry.

What you and MaD are referring to is to link up a network by using the existing mains supply. This has many obstacles that must be overcome first and is illegal btw.

 

[Davidj81]

We are just ripped off in this country. Its not just telecoms but medical aid and insurance and healthcare and banking etc etc. There is such and unwillingness by these corporates to provide reasonably prices products and services. And government is the worst of the lot because they just allow it, I sure nothing will come of the inquiry into the bank charges rip off.

 

[Vice]

Why did they apply for the license anyways? Didn't they understand terms and conditions that were attached? I think it should be revoked. The fundamental expectation is that prices MUST come down, why else would bother giving a 2nd license when we already have a tyrant running our digital/telecom prices to hell? This is an excuse motivated by greed.