Faster, more reliable Internet in SA

[jes]

Faster, more reliable Internet in SA

Level 3 has launched in South Africa at two data centres and with capacity on two undersea cables to start with

 

[Baxteen]

can some one please explain how and when this will benifit the consumer sitting at home?

I feel like this is good news, and in this day and age that is rare, but I dont see how, maybe my brain is just not working right today...

 

[sybertiger]

i use level 3's dns for a few days now
and it run verry good

 

[alternate]

Maybe this is has something to do with the rumors of Netflix coming here.

 

[ThinkCentre]

can some one please explain how and when this will benifit the consumer sitting at home?

I feel like this is good news, and in this day and age that is rare, but I dont see how, maybe my brain is just not working right today...

They supply Internet and Internet related services to the ISP or enterprise.

 

[Baxteen]

They supply Internet and Internet related services to the ISP or enterprise.

so the consumer is not seeing it yet and I never missed that bit anywhere?

 

[OrbitalDawn]

so the consumer is not seeing it yet and I never missed that bit anywhere?

Well, in theory, if ISPs get more capacity then it beefs up their systems which should improve their clients' experience.

 

[mountain_lion]

"Faster, more reliable Internet in South Africa" ??

The heading seems a bit misleading.

The article states:

Arnould said that that they have 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) on both Seacom and the West Africa Cable System (Wacs).

Both of those cable systems were active before Level 3 started offering their service and I am not aware of any speed or reliability upgrade that Level 3 is adding to theses systems.

Level 3 might provide ISPs and other large internet users more choice and perhaps local redundancy for their upstream connection, but most of "the internet" is located outside of South Africa and the speed and reliability of the international internet connection to SA has not changed at all with addition of the Level 3 service.

 

[sin_x]

The heading seems a bit misleading.

The article states:


Both of those cable systems were active before Level 3 started offering their service and I am not aware of any speed or reliability upgrade that Level 3 is adding to theses systems.

Level 3 might provide ISPs and other large internet users more choice and perhaps local redundancy for their upstream connection, but most of "the internet" is located outside of South Africa and the speed and reliability of the international internet connection to SA has not changed at all with addition of the Level 3 service.

Well, it is not *just* about the connection out of SA, but more importantly, Level3's connections to all other tier 1 providers internationally. Remember that "The Internet" does not live directly at the end of SAT3/WACS/SAFE.

Level3's backbone connections mean that your connection from SA to the other side of the globe has a shorter and probably less-congested path, which means a better experience for you.

 

[McGuywer]

These ISPs said that Level 3’s international bandwidth and transit prices were significantly lower than previous market prices from Neotel and Telkom.

Asked about the price potential clients can expect to pay for Level 3 transit services, Arnould said that they sell at a premium price.

Lol. Clients says it's cheap, supplier tries to justify price...


Lets me wonder if it is because SA pays a lot more for bandwidth....

 

[mountain_lion]

Well, it is not *just* about the connection out of SA, but more importantly, Level3's connections to all other tier 1 providers internationally. Remember that "The Internet" does not live directly at the end of SAT3/WACS/SAFE.

Level3's backbone connections mean that your connection from SA to the other side of the globe has a shorter and probably less-congested path, which means a better experience for you.

True, but the benefit to the end user in SA is not significant and only relevant if his/her ISP makes uses of the Level 3 service.
The speed bottleneck for SA internet connections is usually the "last mile" to the consumer and now that we have multiple international cable connections to SA, most ISPs already have redundant i.e. reliable international connectivity. Most internet connectivity failures experienced by SA consumers are now related to local failures.

Level 3 do offer various other services and benefits to the SA internet industry (e.g. their CDN) but I just doubt if their presence is going to provide significantly faster and more reliable internet service in SA.