Neotel and Multichoice

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eitai2001

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Hi.

Please can someone clear this up for me.
First I hear that Neotel is planning on cutting broadband prives by laying undersea fibre optics.
Then I hear that the government is against that and is stopping it.
Now I see they are using Infraco which will only have its lines laid by 2009/10 but will undercut telkom 2/3 but it is state owned.

Can someone please tell me what is happening with Neotel ... all this news has confused me.

Does anyone know when Neotel is launching ... some people have told me the end of this month ... and will they really be seriously undercutting prices. Also ... is their service wireless or fixed line?

Is it worth waiting for Neotel ... or is it better to get a Telkom Closer package?

And someone told me today that Multichoice is planning to bring out cable internet or something like that ... similar to America ... is that true ... and will it be cheap?

Thanks

Itai
 
Neotel have promised a lot but delivered nothing or very little to date. Unless Telkom's monopoly on the Sat3 landing station is relinquished then Neotel will only be able to resell Telkom's or IS's international bandwidth offerings in the near future.

Neotel is planning to offer wireless CDMA 1XRTT and EVDO type services. The 1XRTT will have similar speeds to dialup while EVDO will compete with HSDPA. In any case you will need to buy new hardware to use any of their services. Rather go with Telkom in the meantime (don't sign any contracts though) and if Neotel ever offer anything reasonable only then consider switching. Neotel have made many announcements regarding the launch of their residential services. To date no services have been offered. In order to offer services on a large scale they would also need to have shops or retail outlets to service their customers. As far as I am aware none are operating at this moment.

It seems very unlikely that Multichoice will be able to offer any kind of usable IPTV service at the moment unless there are major changes in the current DSL speeds and local bandwidth charges.
 
Cool ... thanks for the reply ... so in the mean time ... Neotel will prob be wasting my time ... at least until Infraco launches. I currently use Iburst but am sick of their disgruntled service ... at least for me they answer their phones quick.
 
Easy.

Infraco/Neotel/Telkom/Gubmint: It's an inter departmental squabble that will result in less competition, easier government sanctioned price control, and the continuous keeping in the dark of the people who ultimately keep the ANC in power.

Multichoice: will continue to charge as much as possible while showing repeats of repeats and ensuring they're maximising profits for their most important viewers: their shareholders ;)

It's always about the money.
 
Telecoms reform announcements made by our government are just red herrings.

Government has been promising telecoms reform for years with new undersea cables and competition. However by judging by all the deadlines that aren't met one can only deduce that all the government spin regarding telecoms is just talk meant as a delaying tactic to delay progress and keep broadband not affordable so that maximum profit can be made out of government’s Telkom shares.

The government is only forced to have adequate bandwidth for the 2010 world cup so they'll wait untill the last moment and will also want to own the cable even if other private cables could be so much cheaper (much less than our gov’s promised 1/3rd) but will probably be denied landing rights.
 
Multichoice are busy doing their absolute best to miss the convergence boat - they were probably the best placed of all to do really well but appear to lack the imagination and courage to take it to the next step
 
eitai2001 said:
And someone told me today that Multichoice is planning to bring out cable internet or something like that ... similar to America ... is that true ... and will it be cheap?
Click to expand...
It wouldn't make any sense. . . so maybe?
 
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