Iburst Reaches Coverage Milestone

“The benefits of our massive investment in infrastructure will be especially evident come 2010. Overseas visitors will expect easy access to pervasive wireless broadband and South Africa’s reputation depends on not disappointing them,” said Mr Mtshali.
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Iiiish, now how the heck are you going to do that, have 10 or 20000 utd's lying around to rent out?, anybody and his dog with a cell phone will have data.

You're obviously under the delusion that people will rent your technology rather than use the built in facilities of their cellphone, laptop or <sarc>coffee cup</sarc> to use WiMax, WiFi or heaven forbid... 3G...

D
 
Well overseas visitors wont be on our local networks so 3G wont be all that easy for them. Or is therea way to do this?

But ja, not like they are going to buy/rent a UTD instead of a sim card.
 
I think its just a way for Mtshali to throw in mention of "2010". A trendy thing to do. No way Iburst is going to cater for casual internet use, whereas international visitors will be able to use VC/MTN/VM/CC data services via their mobile phones.

Apart from the basestation rollout, don't forget that Iburst have ambitious plans for rolling out thousands of "Iburst internet cafes", particularly in low income areas. Maybe there is some 2010ness is this plan but it is hard to visualize.
 
what you don't realise is while WiFi, Wimax, 3G continue to dominate. other platforms such as FLASH-OFDM, IBURST AND NAVINI are being adopted quitely but very quickly.

iBurst is likely to be in 13 countries by the end of this year

www.iburst.com.au - Australia
www.iburst.co.za - South Africa
www.infinet.co.ke - Kenya
www.iburstghana.com - Ghana
www.elcell.az - Azerbaijan
www.yamatech.com - Canada
www.iburst.com.my - Malaysia
africaonline.co.tz - Tanzania
www.iband.no - Norway
www.iband.no - Holland ??
www.iband.no - Denmark ??

Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia, UK and USA are all rumoured to be in the pipeline. Now if people from these countries come down here for 2010, they can easily roam on iBurst as most of them already share the same frequency bands and iBurst are working on global roaming. So it mights sound far fetched but 2010
is 4 year away and we may be pleasantly surprised.
 
iBurst maxes out at 1Mbps... and there is no faster upgrade available...
In 6 months it wil be left behind...
Even the technology provider (ArrayComm) is abandoning it in favour of WiMAX... Dont think it will be around by 2010 (well perhaps only as a WiMAX provider)...
 
jasweb said:
Even the technology provider (ArrayComm) is abandoning it in favour of WiMAX... Dont think it will be around by 2010 (well perhaps only as a WiMAX provider)...
Click to expand...

The good news is: Apparently there has been a major cash investment from a single mystery investor. The bad news is: apparently they are preparing the casket for their iBurst BWA technology. The technology has had limited traction, and was possibly ahead of its time. The complexity and high costs of installing an iBurst solution didn't appeal to network operators. The President and CEO also left last month. However, that's not to say there wasn't ample spin coming out of ArrayComm. Much like the french official who said Yassir Arafat was alive when he was quite possibly dead, an ArrayComm exec said, "We are getting the company back to its core business of putting its smart antenna technology into multiple wireless standards. At this point iBurst is our graduate student that's finished his PhD. We are now helping our other children." If that doesn't sound like spin, I don't know what does. On the other hand, we have felt for some time that the true value of ArrayComm's intellectual property lies in their smart antenna technology. We expect that (in due time) ArrayComm antenna solutions will figure in future versions of most wireless and cellular standards. Lastly, with the de-emphasis of iBurst, ArrayComm seems to be climbing on board the WiMAX wagon.

http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/5171

Sorry but it is clear that iBurst is as dead as a dodo no matter how you may wish to spin it.
 
We are getting the company back to its core business of putting its smart antenna technology into multiple wireless standards.
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As long as this includes overcoming the problem of poor signal strength for consumers located on downward slopes because the signal 'overshoots' them there will be hope. Until then coverage will continue to be a problem and no business will be generated from such 'potential' consumers.
 
ok, this may "benefit" 2010.... how? buy all the foreigners coming here having to buy special modems when their laptops already have available standardised wifi technology?

investing in the wrong thing...
 
Wireless broadband provider iBurst this week commissioned its 100th base station, in Boksburg, after its nationwide roll-out plan began in November 2004 with the commissioning of a base station in Sandton.
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Siggy still not covered, not even planned yet. Where is the milestone? :confused:
“iBurst has already spent over R200 million boosting coverage for the benefit of our 25 000 subscribers who are appreciating the increasing mobility of their wireless broadband solution,” said Thami Mtshali, CEO of iBurst.
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And how much are those users paying? Taking the price of the 3GB package which most users are probably on, they should make about 25,000 x R599 = R14,975,000 per month. Interesting, it takes them two days to recover a survivor sponsorship.
iBurst plans to roll-out base stations at an average rate of two per week until it has covered 80% of the South African population by November 2007. This original launch target compares favourably with that of iBurst’s Australian counterpart which aims to eventually cover 75% of the Australian population.
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Not much to brag about if you consider Australia is over six times as large as South Africa with less than half the population. PD for Australia - 2.6/km² /// South Africa - 39/km². It's 15 times easier to provide coverage in South Africa and they only have to roll out a sixth of the number of base stations.
jasweb said:
iBurst maxes out at 1Mbps... and there is no faster upgrade available...
Click to expand...
iBurst is fixed location 3G which is capable of 2Mbps.
AcidRaZor said:
ok, this may "benefit" 2010.... how? buy all the foreigners coming here having to buy special modems when their laptops already have available standardised wifi technology?

investing in the wrong thing...
Click to expand...
The next big thing... Coffee Shops. :D
 
We must remember, 2010 is 4 years from now. Lots will happen in this. Broadband speed will definitely increase, probably to around 20 to 50MB/s for the average internet user in the world. High speed customers will be over 100MB/s. For instance, Samsung is preparing for commercial roll-out of their 4G technology by 2010, which will be in exxess of 100MB/s. It would be realistic to assume that in SA it would be lower, but not by much. Neotel would be fully operational by then, Telkom's SAT3 monopoly would have ended a long time ago, EASSy would be fully operational, S.Korea's WiBro would have rolled-out their services, iBurst would cover SA (though their access speed maybe slow), etc. We would possibly need a new under-sea cable just to handle World Cup data traffic, so maybe a SAT4 or EASSy2 or a new cable linking SA with Asia would be launched. International visitors will be used to fast speeds, so we cannot then offer them a meager 2MB/s. My guess would be that we would need to offer an average of 20MB/s. That means our slowest connection speeds must be 20mb/s, not our maximum.

Think about it: by 2010, mobile TV would be standard, so we will need the infrastructure to handle mobile TV to an additional 200,000 people in SA, never mind the 1m to 5m of SAns that will be watching the soccer on the mobiles at work. Who knows, we will probably have mobile TV on demand as standard (we can always dream:rolleyes: ). Lets assume that about 100,000 visitors will demand mobile/fixed video-confencing with their overseas offices during the world cup. The list goes on.

I would guess that in the next 2-3 years someone will make a modem that fits all these technologies. Some Taiwan or Chinese manufacturer that makes them cheap but that fits all the technologies at that time: WiFi, WiMax, WiBro, 3G, HSDPA, B3G, ... maybe even 4G. If they are cheap, these services cover 80% of SA, the $100 laptop is commercially available for at least 2 years, ... demand would increase, competition would increase and prices will come down.

BUT there is ICASA and DOC. Lets just hope that ICASA and the DOC has enough capacity and balls to allow all this to happen.
 
Got bored again -

1. Alberton
2. Auckland Park
3. Bedfordview
4. Benoni
5. Blairgowrie
6. Boksburg
7. Braamfontein
8. Bramley North
9. Bramley South
10. Bryanston
11. Bryanston Mall
12. Constantia Kloof
13. Edenvale
14. Epsom Downs
15. Florida
16. Fourways
17. Fourways/Dainfern
18. Gallo Manor
19. Germiston
20. Honeydew
21. Hyde Park
22. Illovo
23. Isando
24. Johannesburg CBD
25. Johannesburg CBD Rissik Str
26. Johannesburg South/Forest Hill
27. Kempton Park
28. Kempton Park Van Rieebeeck
29. Kenmere
30. Kensington B
31. Killarney
32. Krugersdorp
33. Kyalami
34. Linden
35. Linksfield
36. Little Falls
37. Lyndhurst
38. Midrand
39. Morningside
40. Mulbarton
41. Northcliff
42. Northriding
43. Norwood
44. Olivedale
45. Parkhurst
46. Paulshoff
47. Primrose
48. Randburg
49. Randburg Brightwater Commons
50. Randpark Ridge
51. Risana
52. Rivonia
53. Roodekrans
54. Roodepoort
55. Rosebank
56. Sandton
57. Sandton Fredman Drive
58. Soweto
59. Strijdom Park
60. Sunninghill
61. Vorna Valley
62. Wendywood
63. Wilro Park
64. Woodmead
65. Wynberg
 
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