New internet access facility makes virtual office a reality

rpm

rpm

Admin
Staff member
Joined
Jul 22, 2003
Messages
66,805
Reaction score
5,057
Location
Johannesburg

New internet access facility makes virtual office a reality

BUSINESS owners will be able to turn their cellphone into a virtual office and conduct e-commerce, online banking and email clients all while on the side of the road or waiting at the airport. Vodacom’s launched 3G in December 2004 and it brings fast access to the internet right to your...
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za

"For every 10 megabytes (mb) over the cap, you'll have to fork out an extra R10. Some say that 1gb is not a lot of information."

Is this correct? I thought it was R 2-00 per Meg...
 
Hi RPM

It is still expensive at R1 a meg.

But you do take up tower space, so maybe it isn't...

It cannot compete with other connectivity options though. The only country in the world I know of that made a huge success of 3G is Japan.

Cheers
Antowan
 
iBurst and Sentech as alleged in the article is only faster that 3G as far as marketing and theory is concerned. From the feedback that I have seen in this forum it seems to be very unreliable and also slower that a dial-up connection.

As far as mobile connectivity is concerned I still think that 3G is the one that gets the closest, although I think it is still to expensive for the average user and will only be utilised by the businessman that travels a lot and needs to be connected when out of the office.
 
3G was never meant to be a trickle of hope to bandwidth crazy south african internet slaves (like me). It was meant to be an access technology to support mobile apps like video calls and mobile business applications like email and browsing. If we had decent broadband at home at a good price, we wouldn't give to ****'s about 3G or its price.
 
Vodacom claims that 1GB of free data allows the user to send up to 200 000 emails, or browse up to 25 000 web pages, or download around 10 000 Word documents, or up to 20 000 PowerPoint presentations.
Click to expand...

That statement is really bugging me - it start bugging me when I first saw the damn thing, because is totally ambiguous.

Doing a quick test, I ascertained that for you to receive 200 000 emails, those emails cannot be larger than 5kb. 5kb is equivalent to about 800 words in plain text format. The majority of emails sent out these days are sent with Outlook with it's notoriously bad code optimisation.

200 000 emails in HTML format would allow for about 100 words and a short signature per email.

As for the web pages - well, if you accept that every webpage you'll visit will be under 40kb in size, then sure, you can surf 25 000 of them.

IOW, the figures are completely meaningless, but I guess for the general public, they'll do.

1 gig is a PATHETIC amount of data for a month considering what broadband can offer business these days !
 
Yes i agree. Totally meaningless and pathetic. It's like saying "how long is a piece of string". And would anyone sit through a powerpoint presentation of 40kb? No animation, no pictures, no cool laser sounds....no ways! Its marketing gook for idiot business people who don't know what a gig is. Besides the fact that they don't care about the price or limits of the 3G package since the company pays anyway. It makes me sick
 
Exactly!

Tell the stupid stuff to people who know nothing and pray they will eat it. That is what the corporates do.

Seems like SA business doesn't know about ECONOMY OF SCALE...

Sad...

:(
 
adlo said:
This is good news since ADSL will not be the fastest anymore.
Maybe Telkom will now think about introducing an 1mb/sec ADSL offering instead of making speeds slower.
On second thought, if they do this they will have to reduce the prices on their current ADSL offerings. What is the chance that Telkom would do this? :(
Click to expand...

They would also have to increase the cap.
 
Coming back to Vodacom 3G upgrading speed to 2Mbps, they will have to increase the cap / decrease the per GB pricetag - otherwise everyone will just end up reaching their cap & have to buy more bundles & then they will cry about the pricetag.

Something will have to give, but it will show that Telkomonopoly is a big dumbass with 512K whilst the competition offers 1Mbps & 2Mbps.
 
While Telkom gets slower the competition speeds up, wonder if they will wake up and start offering real ADSL speeds, 4mbit at least.
 
bb_matt said:
That statement is really bugging me - it start bugging me when I first saw the damn thing, because is totally ambiguous.

Doing a quick test, I ascertained that for you to receive 200 000 emails, those emails cannot be larger than 5kb. 5kb is equivalent to about 800 words in plain text format. The majority of emails sent out these days are sent with Outlook with it's notoriously bad code optimisation.

200 000 emails in HTML format would allow for about 100 words and a short signature per email.

As for the web pages - well, if you accept that every webpage you'll visit will be under 40kb in size, then sure, you can surf 25 000 of them.

IOW, the figures are completely meaningless, but I guess for the general public, they'll do.

1 gig is a PATHETIC amount of data for a month considering what broadband can offer business these days !
Click to expand...

Yea, a website WITHOUT images is on average (depending on what you view, for instance this forum) 20-90kb

Do these people realise one can use attachments ( :eek: ) to send through with email? Women love sending mails with attachments. And the average sized Power Point presentation I've seen them send is around 1meg.

That brings me to another point. Do these people even realise what they're talking about? 512kb/s is different to 512kbps! Because to get 512kb/s download you'll need a 4096kbps line (yes 4meg) and to have a 2meg/s download you'll need a 16384kbps line.

These marketing and sales people is what makes me insane. I bet you they're the ones that decided the cap would be enough. Sheesh, I surf more TEXT BASED WEBSITES than the alloted 1 gig. Imagine if they had graphics on them! :(
 
Actually,
kb/s = kbps = (k)ilo(b)its(p)er(s)econd
kB/s = kBps = (k)ilo(B)ytes(p)er(s)econd
 
A lot of people keep complaining about the speed of ADSL. As far as I am concerned the speed is great for most uses, I am not talking about lag times and stuff like that used by gamers.

I do think that what is really an use for most people is the affordability and the cap that is applied. I am using ADSL384 and for most purposes the speed is well more that I need. When it gets to speed it is relative and nobody will ever get enough.
 
"I do think that what is really an use for most people is the affordability and the cap that is applied. I am using ADSL384 and for most purposes the speed is well more that I need."

I beg to differ, we are in fact limiting our perceptions of the various choices due to the decreased speed and draconian cap implementation. Look at what is being done in other countries in terms of online gaming, VoIP, streaming video and telecommuting. I think that the cap in fact makes the speed issues seem trivial but launching 192 Kbit ADSL as a new product when other countries are launching 40 Mbit connections is pathetic.
 
I agree with SpamdaMan, we set ourselves up for abuse by Telkomonopoly if we accept DSL192 as being a reasonable service.

Speed is necessary for lotsa things, if it weren't we could all revert to 2400baud modems & use BelTel.

The fact is the world is moving ahead at a pace limited only by the speed of broadband & its availability (obviously price doesn't even factor in internationally since it is really cheap already, altho getting cheaper with increased competition).

If we all had speady connections at reasonable (not cheap, just reasonable) prices we could do so much more, the eCommerce side is one example. Naturally the cap set at 3GB is a gift from the devil that we really don't need.
 
I didn't say that ADSL192 is a reasonable service. What I did say is that we should not get so fixated on the speed alone, that we lose sight of what our actual requirement is for having Internet acess, wheter that be braodband, the terminology which we can debate for ever.

What I said is more important than just the speed, is the affordability for 24x7 internet as well as the stability of the connection. For most of my purposes the service that I have is adequate, I do however think that it is way over priced, and if we should start contemplating vide streaming the cap and speed is going to limit us. The fortunately is not my main requirement as of yet.

As far as gaming is concerned, why have none of the ISP considered selling a service that is specifically structured and shaped to fit their requirements?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X