Residential Metro Ethernet

[Yotch]

With the imminent launch of Metro Ethernet services in SA in the next few weeks it is interesting to see what is available to residential customers overseas. Sapphire recently (Oct 2007) lauched Metro Ethernet services in Gibraltar at prices only slightly above those of their ADSL services. A one year subscription to an uncapped 512K/256K service costs around 220 GBP i.e. <R300 per month with a 50 GBP installation fee. Could something similar be in the works for SA?
http://www.sapphire.gi/?page=4
http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&locale=en-US&oid=100229670

 

[mhmayet]

Doubt it. There are already Metro Ethernet services available in SA. These are treated as premium services for corporates. Neotels connectivity is delivered as ethernet over SDH and is sold as a leased line (diginet) replacement. Telkom recently announced Metro Ethernet. Don't think it'll be priced for consumers though.

 

[LabAnimal]

Greed remains the order of the day!

 

[Roman4604]

There are practical/economic reasons why the local fibre services providers (Telkom, Neotel, MTN, Vodacom using either MetroE, ATM or NG-SDH) are initially pursuing corporates rather than residential customers. I believe this has mainly to do with the expense of running the local loop fibre from the core ring into the customer premesis.

A juicy high-capacity corporate connection contract has enough margin (over the long term) to pay for the deployment of the local loop fibre, whereas a much cheaper residential connection does not (plus contract periods are shorter or non-existant).

Also remember the route planning of their core rings is based on proximity to larger companies with a high probablity of taking up their service, so local loop distances to residential areas will generally be longer (and we are a tad bigger than Gibraltar).