Tharaxis,
While you touched on a big problem there, I don't think it's merely infrastructure holding us back.
It's very well known that Telkom are one of the largest consortium partners to Afrolinque, which operates the SAT3/WASC/SAFE submarine and terrestrial cable system.
The cable runs from Asia to South Africa, and then up along the West African coast to reach the UK.
The cable serves many island ranges in the southern Indian Ocean with connectivity to Asian countries and to South Africa, and then to the UK. It also serves West African countries with connectivity to the UK, SA and Asia.
The cable system has a maximum bandwidth of about 130GBps, meaning that 130 service providers anywhere could theoretically have a 1GBps international link. In truth, most providers that buy bandwidth on the system normally go for the 155MBps package, which provides direct international connectivity to the UK and Asia at speeds faster than a Fast Ethernet LAN connection. It is possible to buy space on SAT3/WASC/SAFE from 34MBps upwards.
From the throughput characteristics I have listed, it's quite obvious that the infrastructure for serving international bandwidth is not a problem, not for Telkom anyway, who own and operate the portion of the cable system that runs through South Africa and our territorial waters.
The real problem is the incredibly high prices that providers must pay for bandwidth on the cable system. This is not the case in other nations served by the cable. Telkom appear to want to recoup the capital investment they made in their portion of the cable within the first few years. Most operators realise that such a cable project is a large, long term, undertaking, meant to benifit their local population and economy. These operators, throughout West Africa and the southern Indian Ocean, provide bandwidth on the cable system to service providers and national backbones at reasonable prices.
Telkom, however, do not realise the economic importance of access to this fantastic infrastructure. Instead, they milk South African users that wish to have access to the system for every last cent they can squeeze out of them. As a co-owner and operator, Telkom do not pay for bandwidth on the cable system. SAIX does have to pay for bandwidth, also not on the cable system, but to the backbones with which they peer at the other end of the system, in the UK.
However, that's no excuse to drive up prices saying that it's due to the cost of international bandwidth. SAIX pay extremely reasonable prices for their UK bandwidth because of the abundance that Tharaxis points out. They have almost unlimited bandwidth to the peering point via the SAT3/WASC part of the cable. This extremely cheap (by international standards) bandwidth is then resold to their customers at an unimaginable profit margin.
Telkom, who pay absolutely nothing for bandwidth on the cable system, also resells bandwidth on the system for the same, massively inflated prices. This means that anyone hoping to set up an effective link to Europe or Asia, must not only buy bandwidth from a peer in the UK or Asia (which is usually reasonably priced,) but must also buy the bandwidth to get there from Telkom, at prices that are usually far beyond the reach of most small to medium sized service providers.
On the topic of local infrastructure, I agree with Tharaxis that there is a shortage. Many connections still operate over very slow ATM links set up by Telkom long ago. As it would severely impact their profit margin, Telkom have no interest in upgrading this aging infrastructure. Even the very new ADSL network must still rely upon this old infrastructure. In most cases, the DSLAM at most exchanges provides ADSL users with a link to a PoP which has a total national bandwidth of only 2MBps, which is shared, not only with other ADSL users, but sometimes, with SAIX's Diginet customers.
It is expensive to lay new infrastructure to support broadband services, Eskom's Telecommunications arm and Transtel, (Transnet Telecommunications) reported a loss of R800 million for 2003, money spent on laying fiber infrastructure to support the SNO. The loss is due to the SNO not starting up, but that is the price to lay infrastructure reaching most major centers.
While R800 million is a lot of money, it is a very small amount for Telkom to spend. The problem here is that they won't spend it. At least, not on infrastructure. They will spend more than that on trying to impress FIFA so that we might host the World Cup in 2010, but will find their beloved country getting turned down again.
Ironically, one of the reasons cited by those voting against us the previous time, was lack of solid telecommunications infrastructure. Telkom will find, if they spent some money on helping to develop the country, instead of buying FIFA officials nice cars and trips to exotic islands, we might have a better chance, but that's not how management thinks.
Telkom management of course, do not realise that not all of FIFA can be bribed. Some of the officials look at a country's ability to host the event, not its ability to bribe officials, and make their decision based on that.
Naturally, this noble expenditure to help their beloved country win the bid will not come from them, it will be payed for by us, that's what the last rates increase was for, expect another one shortly before the Olympics.
I am very certain that the situation could improve if the SNO process ever got underway again. That's still not helping the bandwidth situation though, as last I checked, the SNO will only be allowed to carry voice calls. This means, at most, we would be able to use them to carry 56kbps V.92 traffic, but nothing with real bandwidth.
Perhaps, in the future, if the SNO does materialize, and legislation eventually changes, we might be able to gain access to the excellent infrastructure prepared by Eskom and Transtel, don't expect that to happen soon though.
Willie Viljoen
Web Developer
Adaptive Web Development
Sign up with Google
]
