Licensing the SNO

[pimal3]

stoke : There is no reason to insult the President

I'm sorry but I have to agree with stoke. The president is the CEO of South Africa Inc and he has to be held accountable for his appointee's actions or lack thereof. Has anyone in Government ever heard of performance appraisals?

The president has spoken many times of bridging the digital divide and reducing the entrance cost of internet access, but he has done absolutely nothing to achieve it. If my boss really wants something done and I refuse to do it or am not competent to do it, he will definitely take serious action against me. Why can't the president do it as well?

With respect to Trevor Manuel's performance, he is about the only minister who does his work properly and in the interest of the country. The rest of the ministers are all incompetent as witnessed by the Auditor-General's recent reports on inadequate Government Departmental financial controls and late reports.

 

[TMoose]

The President is a weak leader. If he wasn't he'd be slapping his ministers around and getting them to do their bloody work. On every day of every term of his presidency new scandals errupted, whether it be the disgusting way in which our public hospitals have degraded into pits of slaughter instead of places of healing, or the condition of our roads, or the way our telecommunications have slipped to the point where other African countries are starting to surpass us, or the out of control crime rate, or the corruption scandals exploding all around, the list goes on and on.

Nobody is being held accountable. The President says nothing. If I were President and I saw some scandal all over the papers about how some elderly lady died in her own waste in a public hospital I'd come down on the bloody health minister like a ton of bricks. If after 3 years of promises an SNO hasn't been licensed when there was promises of a TNO by 2005 I'd have some very hard words for the minister of communications.

I agree with Primal3. The President is the CEO of the country, and I'm sorry but IMHO he's doing a pretty bad job. Had he been the CEO of a private company and all the departments under him were misfiring he'd be fired within a few months. The country is in effect running off the efforts of our Finance Minister and the Governor of the Reserve Bank.

 

[Razer0]

The only time I ever see Thabo on TV is when he's overseas trying to solve other countries problems, despite the fact the we have a ton of our own.

But anyway, we'l see if this License does indeed get issued on Friday and what will come of it. I'l definitely remain positive on the SNO. Besides they have no reason to not have our trust because it is after the DoC and ICASA that has delayed them.

Gl to the SNO!

 

[Turtle]

stoke : There is no reason to insult the President

Hate to break it, but these guys work for us, are mandated to manage our economic infrastructure in a way that maximally benefits us all, and quite frankly with regard to telecommunications policy their performance has been awful - thousands of people have suffered as a result (I mean through lost jobs, stifled economic growth, digital divide etc. not rich kiddies whining because they can't download p2p). The 'buck stops' at the president; yet he even re-appointed Ivy for a second round after her complete non-performance the first time, wtf.

Granted, this government has done a lot of good things (arguably they might even be the best leadership South Africa has ever had - but that's only because past leaders set such low standards, so we really shouldn't use that as a benchmark!) --- but their successes do not mean they're beyond reproach for their failures, and we should *always* be pushing to raise the bar (e.g. "4% economic growth is not good enough - we need 6%" ... it's a competitive world, being just "good" is not going to be "good enough" in the long run.)

I'm eager to sign up with the SNO myself because Telkom have screwed me over so many ways I don't want to give them one more cent that I don't have to, but with the SNO CEO already stating they're going to avoid a price war with Telkom at all costs, I'm not expecting price drops or any real competition in the market :/ ... unless convergence (e.g. VOIP) helps to start placing pressure on fixed line operators, we can probably look forward to several more years of price-gouging. Unfortunately with issues like LLU and SAT-3 access not being resolved it is a near certainty that this will be the case - you can bet on it. Why do you think Telkom's share price is unmoved by this announcement?

 

[mancombseepgood]

Stop!!!

...by a president who is blind.

Don't discriminate against blind people

 

[Drusky]

...i think they will be using telkom infrastructure...

That means they'll be piggy back providers like cell C. If you've ever had a cell C contract you'll know that if the Vodacom network is busy your cell C ass gets dropped first. Hope the SNO users doesn't suffer the same fate.

 

[krycor]

well they say they gonna use wireless infrastructure.. but the cost of that is huge for setting up.

 

[mccrack]

well they say they gonna use wireless infrastructure.. but the cost of that is huge for setting up.

I'd imagine the cost of laying copper and fibre is far more.

Wireless is the only way to go and it offers mobility. Connectivity anywhere.

What about international transit, how are they going to manage that?