Is broadband in SA true?

To answer the question posed as a title.... No its not true...

The article also in some ways glosses over the fact that even with rubbish international access, we get strangled locally by ridiculous prices thanks to Telscum...
 
A lot of words but of little substance. I had to glance over to the top of the article a few times to see who wrote it, just to make sure it wasn't a Neotel or Telkom employee.
 
Sorry this article only states (again) what all already know, that telkom(eskom) sucks and we are still being ripped off,
 
What a strange article... I'm not entirely sure what the author was actually trying to say, but what he DID say at the end was just annoying:

Ultimately the ICT industry can assist by presenting guidelines in terms of global best practice, but this is a situation that calls for businesses to be proactive and alert to new developments.
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Actually, global best practice has no real advice on managing bandwidth in bandwidth-starved locations because, well, frankly they don't have to. For us to ACHIEVE that particular element of global best practice, we need to refuse taking it up the wazoo from Telkom and stop feeding the animal. Consumer activism, like this site, and doing what we can to revolt against the Telkom tyranny. Not sit there and take and find ways of making the best of a bad situation...
 
Though I love to dump on Telkom as much as the next user. Another finger has to be pointed at other service providers for not implemeting technologies to use the available bandwidth more efficiantly.

If you look at a company that started with a clean slate, like Neotel, have come on to the scene (corporate scene) and are able to compete with established players. One only has to look at the SITA deal they got. And if you look at the relative size of the organisation, its amazing what they have done.

And even though existing providers have to deal with maintaining legacy equipment, their shareholders are unwilling to invest in revamping their infrastructure. I would presume they are worried about preserving the margins they have now and keeping capital costs down. But in the long run not a good choice to make.
 
ic said:
Which 'other existing service providers' [presumably you meant existing network operators?], besides Telkodemonopolies are you referring to - specifically?
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I meant all first tier providers.
 
ic said:
Specifically, and what technologies are they or have they not been implementing to more efficiently use available bandwidth? - as you alluded to in your original post.
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I'm new to the service provider space, so bear with me if there are any holes in my post. :)

For one thing, I feel metro ethernet could be deployed as a standard on access area netwoks. As opposed to the TDM based stuff we have now. Could you imagine the user experiance improvement with that? Similar speeds to what you receive on your LAN. And coming to distribution and core links, where the Telscum or Neotel side kicks in, you could deploy bandwidth optimization platforms, they will have to MASSIVE, but it can be done. Telkom themselves use Expand boxes for their far flung regions IIRC.

EDIT: Any provider that has PoPs could change them to Metro-Ethernet.
 
sox : Unfortunately, until recently actually providing the interlinking infrastructure has been the realm of Telscum, so our 1st Tier SPs have still had to rely on Telscum's aging ATM network...
 
Another journalist who can identify the problem, but not the solution.
 
The solution he suggests sound a lot like one thought up by government.

"Due to factors we refuse to take responsibility for, Broadband is expensive. Please switch off your geyser"
 
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ic said:
Here is a broadband example of what not to do: iBurst SA limits the size of its customers' email accounts to 10MB, which is simply ridiculous and an insult.
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It is.

Wife had to send some emails off to somebody else, and said person still had a 5Mb mailbox size...

it simply is not large enough in this time and age... In the 1990's 5Mb was more than enough, nowadays Gmail offers 6Gb for free. All I delete is spam emails, and junk emails, the rest stays there.
 
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