Seacom cable brings the rain

[telkomreallysux]

Fast cheap internet didn't happen yesterday. People overseas have had it for a decade. It's not as if we've been screwed for a few months, this has been cr@p forever, and it's not just the price. The service sucks big time. How much money do you think Telkom has made whilst you pay for a line that is down ?

Never heard the competition board squeaking when record profits were being made on an infrastructure paid for by taxpayers. You can bet Telkom profits didn't go back into improving their service, but into fat bonuses.

With the ANCs 37% stake in Telkom, and a huge chunk of BEE ownership, the money will keep coming, even if it's thru baleouts.

 

[wirelessvsadsl]

I would really like to know your calculation methods. imo this is how it goes
cable is worth 600million USD so
600,000,000 / 20(years) = 30 million per year / 12(months) = 2.5Million per month.

now the cable has a capacity of 1.28TB = 1310.72Gbps = 1342177.28Mbps

2500000 (per month for full cable) / 1342177.28(Per Mbps price) = 1.86USD

Thats the way I work it out.

With the whole local story, I think its just a load of BS and all ISPs are just trying to pocket as much as possible b4 we start throwing rotten eggs in their direction, simple maths really, if I can get an IS 30GB account for R130 per month, that works out to R4.33per gig, our general international back then was R70 per gig, factoring in say R189 for one gig on 384 line, minus the R135 (for argument sake) line rental R54 goes into that gig of bandwidth,
since international has a local portion we will subtract R4.33 from that we get R49.67 as the total international cost, this has now been REDUCED by 90% which makes it R4.97 adding the local R4.33 gives us a wopping R9.30 per gig which means the initial bundle should now cost only R144.30

But then I guess they will find other ways to make that higher

stm1 forward purchase around $4mil /240 months/155 = $100

no interest no profit no tier1 interconnect fees in london no annual maintenance charge from seacom no equipment costs included

Believe me thise are the facts

you will not see any bandwidth flowing from seacom for at least 3-4 weeks still as local compliance and testing has not been completed yet

 

[webslave]

In my humble opinion, South African Telecoms companies are a bunch of clever, opportunistic, greedy, blood sucking ...... That said, because they have had to build in some cases, develop parallel infrastructure to circumvent Helkom. The issue is the institutionalization caused in large part by the past.

The south african consumers who can afford this exorbitant pricing are a minority and as long as this absurd situation continues there is no reason for the ISp to stop milking the golden cow of South African consumers.

NEOTEL chose not to be the second first tier operator precisely for reasons such as this.

Ultimately until the user numbers are up beyond the current figure s and the market penetration is into the multiple millions on fixed line (yes you can blame the Current Telkom management for this) set ups and only then will this change.

So Telkom wise up, give away the fixed lines and the broadband and charge per call or charge very little for the line rental and make all the packages unlimited up to 10meg. speeds. So a suggested package would be for R50pcm inclusive of broadband at say 1meg, then R100pcm/1.5meg, R 200pcm/2meg, R300/3meg with equal number of call mins. This would make it very easy to manage and simpler yet profitable.

Still a rip off but a start and for heavens sake make it unlimited.

 

[kingmonty]

In my humble opinion, South African Telecoms companies are a bunch of clever, opportunistic, greedy, blood sucking ...... That said, because they have had to build in some cases, develop parallel infrastructure to circumvent Helkom. The issue is the institutionalization caused in large part by the past.

The south african consumers who can afford this exorbitant pricing are a minority and as long as this absurd situation continues there is no reason for the ISp to stop milking the golden cow of South African consumers.

NEOTEL chose not to be the second first tier operator precisely for reasons such as this.

Ultimately until the user numbers are up beyond the current figure s and the market penetration is into the multiple millions on fixed line (yes you can blame the Current Telkom management for this) set ups and only then will this change.

So Telkom wise up, give away the fixed lines and the broadband and charge per call or charge very little for the line rental and make all the packages unlimited up to 10meg. speeds. So a suggested package would be for R50pcm inclusive of broadband at say 1meg, then R100pcm/1.5meg, R 200pcm/2meg, R300/3meg with equal number of call mins. This would make it very easy to manage and simpler yet profitable.

Still a rip off but a start and for heavens sake make it unlimited.

Although I somewhat agree with your post, the bolded bit is actually incorrect. Neotel were blind-sided by Alec Erwin and his Infraco dream. Originally the Transtel telecoms infrastructure was to be offloaded to Neotel, and they would have basically just needed to provide last mile infrastructure (and, technically, the State's lack of purpose and suitable policy direction basically blind-sided Neotel on Last Mile Connectivity as well with the continuously delayed planning and introduction of LLU). Neotel had to spend money on infrastructure that Telkom effectively got for free. Given the sheer economic scale of building a telecoms network, capital cost recovery is not only understandable but, for the success of any company; essential.

So while everyone would love to blame Neotel or Seacom or whomever for not coming to the party, the truth is that 90%+ of our telecommunications problems today sits squarely with the government.

 

[BruceS]

Edited to remove question which was already asked and answered...*blush*

 

[BruceS]

Believe me thise are the facts

Really? So what you're saying is the ISPs were running at a loss before the 90% price drop in international bandwidth prices?

These guys have painted themselves into a corner. Either international has come down or it hasn't. Which is it?

 

[Sting]

Neotel were blind-sided by Alec Erwin and his Infraco dream.

100% correct.

So Telkom wise up, give away the fixed lines and the broadband and charge per call or charge very little for the line rental and make all the packages unlimited up to 10meg. speeds. So a suggested package would be for R50pcm inclusive of broadband at say 1meg, then R100pcm/1.5meg, R 200pcm/2meg, R300/3meg with equal number of call mins.

This is similar to what I am saying - but then all the operators will run to ICASA/Competition Commission and cry foul.

 

[Tns]

of course telkom would be the best! they kill their competition!

 

[Kasyx]

And, as the FM’s Duncan McLeod reported last week, Telkom actually loses money on the line rental it charges its customers because it doesn’t cover the cost of providing that service.

Could someone explain this, or link me to the original article?

I don't get how they could be losing money on a "line rental" charge that is pretty much superfluous...

 

[LazyLion]

Could someone explain this, or link me to the original article?

I don't get how they could be losing money on a "line rental" charge that is pretty much superfluous...

In any first world country where the technicians know what they are doing it would be superfluous. In a country where the technical work is supervised by and carried out by under-trained monkeys there is always a cost over-run and bribes to pay. hence the surcharge/bribe fee.

 

[Kasyx]

In any first world country where the technicians know what they are doing it would be superfluous. In a country where the technical work is supervised by and carried out by under-trained monkeys there is always a cost over-run and bribes to pay. hence the surcharge/bribe fee.

Ahh...

Thanks for clearing that up

At least they seem to be paying incompetence tax.

 

[kilos]

How much does the IP Connect product cost per meg roughly, and what sizes does it come in?

Read in one of the articles R390 000/month for 140Mb/s access that is just for the last miles access as you still require Internet access. Imagine the IS bill from Telkom for IP connect ?

 

[Tornalca]

Does anyone know if any of the ISP's are offering Seacom only accounts?

I just got a quote from IS. They do offer this as an option but only over a diginet line. So for a normal user this is not an option unless you can afford R15000+ a month.

The option below:

1.3.4. Velocity
A lower cost Access Service, wherein customers obtain international fibre bandwidth via IS’ East Coast cable system. The cable system is redundant in and of itself, outages result in automatic self re-routing via a redundant cable within the same system. There is however, no failover in the case of both cables being unavailable.