SEACOM construction finished!

Great news, well done to the Seacom team. It's good to see that there are companies out that can deliver on time. Now to see the if they can deliver on the other promise of cheaper bandwidth.
 
Forgive me as I'm not a telecoms fundi. I use a Vodacom Mobile modem at 7.2 Mbps and have done for some time. I just want to understand the whole logic of what this undersea cable will do for the broadband users in this country. I understand we might, I say might, get more data for our price meaning cheaper data. Here's my question:

In the article it states the undersea cable is a 1.28Tbps Cable. This equates to 1,280,000 Mbps. Reading these forums for more than a year, I get the impression that most will be happy with at least 4Mbps. If I use simple maths then It looks as though that if 320,000 people are downloading at the same time near full speed, then the undersea cable would of reached it's full load capabilities. It just sounds small to me and nowhere near enough to satisfy many in this country.

I'm sure my logic here doesn't apply to this so maybe someone can come on and explain exactly the capabilities of the undersea cable.
 
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poolmania said:
Forgive me as I'm not a telecoms fundi. I use a Vodacom Mobile modem at 7.2 Mbps and have done for some time. I just want to understand the whole logic of what this undersea cable will do for the broadband users in this country. I understand we might, I say might, get more data for our price meaning cheaper data. Here's my question:

In the article it states the undersea cable is a 1.28Tbps Cable. This equates to 1,280,000 Mbps. Reading these forums for more than a year, I get the impression that most will be happy with at least 4Mbps. If I use simple maths then It looks as though that if 300,000 people are downloading at the same time near full speed, then the undersea cable would of reached it's full load capabilities. It just sounds small to me and nowhere near enough to satisfy many in this country.

I'm sure my logic here doesn't apply to this so maybe someone can come on and explain exactly the capabilities of the undersea cable.
Click to expand...

This is where contention ratios come into play. Most broadband services are sold with contention ratios, the exceptions usually being leased lines.
 
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I get :
Code: 
(1.28 • 1024 • 1024) ∕ 4
= 335544.32
Users...

.32 is still good enough for me :D
 
poolmania said:
Forgive me as I'm not a telecoms fundi. I use a Vodacom Mobile modem at 7.2 Mbps and have done for some time. I just want to understand the whole logic of what this undersea cable will do for the broadband users in this country. I understand we might, I say might, get more data for our price meaning cheaper data. Here's my question:

In the article it states the undersea cable is a 1.28Tbps Cable. This equates to 1,280,000 Mbps. Reading these forums for more than a year, I get the impression that most will be happy with at least 4Mbps. If I use simple maths then It looks as though that if 300,000 people are downloading at the same time near full speed, then the undersea cable would of reached it's full load capabilities. It just sounds small to me and nowhere near enough to satisfy many in this country.

I'm sure my logic here doesn't apply to this so maybe someone can come on and explain exactly the capabilities of the undersea cable.
Click to expand...

True if all were downloading at the same time, its like a highway they provision for certain peak traffic scenarios but you only have these peak traffic scenarios for maybe 10-15% of the time.
 
nictron said:
True if all were downloading at the same time, its like a highway they provision for certain peak traffic scenarios but you only have these peak traffic scenarios for maybe 10-15% of the time.
Click to expand...

So what you saying is that at the peak times, these speeds will be significantly lower to accommodate more people. I expect there to be a huge demand in the next year or two for broadband. I think Vodacom themselves released stats where they said that they have 720,000 users using their broadband services. This is as we speak increasing by the day. If you put Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Neotel and the rest together, then I get the feeling that this Cable is like a new lane being commissioned on the highway, it will ease the congestion for a while but in a year or two it will be as congested as before as there will be more cars on the road.

I'm just trying to get a feeling for what this will do for all of us that demand broadband services as they have it overseas. I know it's not going to be as good as overseas but at least it must be close. At the moment looking at the size of the cable, I just don't see that. Maybe I'm wrong.
 
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Not to burst anyones bubble here - but do youll really think this cable is going to change anything for us?

From my understanding this cable does not yet connect us to the west (americas) - and since most of our surfing and dloading comes from there, will it make much of a difference?

Furthermore, seeing as neotel is so plagued by problems which dont appear to be bandwidth related, i dont see this cable doing anything other than fuelling our expectations.
 
Its not like the Telkom infrastructure will disappear, so think of it as another 330 000 people that will be able to have 1meg lines. Never mind that SEACOM is not the only cable that is coming.....

Congrats to the SEACOM guys..... I'm looking forward to enjoying the fruits of your labour !
 
poolmania said:
Forgive me as I'm not a telecoms fundi. I use a Vodacom Mobile modem at 7.2 Mbps and have done for some time. I just want to understand the whole logic of what this undersea cable will do for the broadband users in this country. I understand we might, I say might, get more data for our price meaning cheaper data. Here's my question:

In the article it states the undersea cable is a 1.28Tbps Cable. This equates to 1,280,000 Mbps. Reading these forums for more than a year, I get the impression that most will be happy with at least 4Mbps. If I use simple maths then It looks as though that if 320,000 people are downloading at the same time near full speed, then the undersea cable would of reached it's full load capabilities. It just sounds small to me and nowhere near enough to satisfy many in this country.

I'm sure my logic here doesn't apply to this so maybe someone can come on and explain exactly the capabilities of the undersea cable.
Click to expand...

Yeah i did look at that myself at first, but the fact is AUS has 2 cables coming into in, at a capacity of about 800giga bits per sec, and if thats enough for them, then surely we well be ok with 1.25Tbps
 
Local Loop Unbundling is important yes, but not crucial to the lowering of prices. As long as our ISPs get a connection to Seacom they can lower prices. Telkom can still charge us the monthly ADSL rental fee... but there is nothing stopping the ISPs from lowering prices once they get connected to Seacom. Much like many ISPs now sell bandwidth from Internet Solutions, they will also be able to offer a Seacom based solution or blended solution. The ISPs will sell their ADSL bandwidth based on their cheapest connection... that makes sense and is competitive.

The Seacom cable does not need to be physically connected to the United States, even going through Europe to the United States will be enough for now. But there are some more West African Cables coming and hopefully another Trans-Atlantic cable in the next ten years.
 
ushir said:
Not to burst anyones bubble here - but do youll really think this cable is going to change anything for us?

From my understanding this cable does not yet connect us to the west (americas) - and since most of our surfing and dloading comes from there, will it make much of a difference?

Furthermore, seeing as neotel is so plagued by problems which dont appear to be bandwidth related, i dont see this cable doing anything other than fuelling our expectations.
Click to expand...

It connects us to the UK which has a lot of cables to the Americas.

International bandwidth is just that, it's international, doesnt mean we'll pay more to get something from AUS or USD, there will be a cost difference, but it doesn't affect us.

Thats my understnading

you dont have to go to neotel to get the bandwidth
 
hyperian said:
What kind of increase in bandwidth and useage can the average adsl user expect? Will 4mbps lines with 10 gig caps become the norm?
Click to expand...

Most of us are hoping for 50 or 100 Gb caps to be the norm. With reasonable (true) uncapped products also available.
 
Woot!

Doesn't matter if things don't change right away... this is progress and they've done it on schedule.

When it is live then we can see, all that needs to happen is natural competition. Vote with your wallet, don't be indecisive and apathetic.

What would really be great though is LLU... then I can tell Telkom go impale themselves on a suitable cactus, preferably with vigour.
 
Wise words Noruk. Competition is what we need, and Seacom not only brings competition to the local international bandwidth market, but will be a catalyst for competition in the broadband market.

But as you pointed out - broadband subscribers will have to 'vote with their wallet' to help competition along!
 
poolmania said:
Forgive me as I'm not a telecoms fundi. I use a Vodacom Mobile modem at 7.2 Mbps and have done for some time. I just want to understand the whole logic of what this undersea cable will do for the broadband users in this country. I understand we might, I say might, get more data for our price meaning cheaper data. Here's my question:

In the article it states the undersea cable is a 1.28Tbps Cable. This equates to 1,280,000 Mbps. Reading these forums for more than a year, I get the impression that most will be happy with at least 4Mbps. If I use simple maths then It looks as though that if 320,000 people are downloading at the same time near full speed, then the undersea cable would of reached it's full load capabilities. It just sounds small to me and nowhere near enough to satisfy many in this country.

I'm sure my logic here doesn't apply to this so maybe someone can come on and explain exactly the capabilities of the undersea cable.
Click to expand...

The contention ratios mean that some of the time you'll get excellent speeds, and then some of the time you'll get very bad speeds. But most of the time you'll get acceptable speeds. You see during normal surfing you're only using the pipe for a few seconds every now and then, humans are slow to read content. So nobody is using their whole pipe all of the time, except when downloading content, constant stream of data and all that.

The big problem comes in when everyone is downloading content (YouTube etc.) all of the time. So to be fair the ISPs and the routers can kick someone off for a short time to release capacity. Or throttle speed according to demand. The idea is that everyone gets a fair chance. Kicking is bad :mad:, use a download manager :D.

That is why it is not possible to let everyone download at full speed 24/7, 30 days a month. The power users do break the system, but then they should be allowed to pay. Unfortunately we're all paying too much for very little. :sick: :sick: :sick:
 
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