Sentech will land ACE cable in SA

[Tegnik]

Heres hoping they do a better job than NeoTel

 

[arf9999]

ACSA is probably more of a Gov monopoly than Sentech
and
that NEVER stopped them from getting money on the open market



MW

ACSA and Sentech are not the same type of organisation. ACSA is a public listed company and 24.2% of its shares are held outside the state.

Sentech is a true parastatal, the government has 100% ownership.

 

[arf9999]

IMO Sentech should stick to TV+Radio signal distribution, and should not venture into waters where it hasn't got a clue [i.e. broadband - for that guavamint has Broadband Infraco].

Yes of course it is true that The National Treasury refused to fund Sentech's MyWireless expansion, and that is why MyWireless stagnated and could not grow and eventually died - despite Poison Ivy's and Stalin-Mafole's efforts to secure funding for Sentech [not just MyWireless but also rural Wifi projects AFAIK], but by that time Sentech had earned itself such a bad reputation with consumers that I hazard a guess someone within The National Treasury realised that Sentech was just not up to the task of running a broadband network, and that private companies were better equipped and far more likely to succeed with private funding.

All very much debatable, but I think one can reasonably apportion significant blame on Sentech for the failure of MyWireless, the lack of expansion one can say was definitely due to a lack of funding, but should one really throw more good money at bad management...

I'm not sure why you think infraco will be any better It's not like they have a track record...

 

[ic]

I'm not sure why you think infraco will be any better It's not like they have a track record...

Subtleties & assumptions.

I don't recall posting that Broadband Infraco would do better than Sentech, nor that Broadband Infraco has a track record worth mentioning - Broadband Infraco might still be afloat, but it certainly has not proved itself yet IMO.

My point is that guavamint established Broadband Infraco as an entity that focuses on wholesale bandwidth, whereas Sentech's primary job is still signal distribution.

To my knowledge it was Poison Ivy and Stalin-Mafole that had this strange dream of Sentech being a bandwidth and broadband service provider, and since neither of those two idiots are in positions of power running the show at the DoC, I wonder whose bright idea it was to revive that dream when guavamint already has Broadband Infraco for wholesale bandwidth.

It is unnecessary duplication and distracts Sentech from its primary purpose which is signal distribution which Sentech does reasonably well, whereas Sentech has already proven itself to be a broadband failure - regardless of funding issues - just imagine ISPs having to deal with a call centre full of Sentech orks when access to the ACE cable goes phut and no one at Sentech has a clue as to why and possibly even what ACE is...not that Broadband Infraco would do any better - but that is Broadband Infraco's reason for existing - as much as I disagree with it being managed by a parastatal on tax payers' dimes.

 

[Pavlov]

Sentech-Infraco

Sentech-Infraco 2010. Consolodation.

 

[ponder]

So what happens when Government decides to not give Sentech funding again, we end up with a 1.92 Tbps cable connected 2 one PC at the landing station?

If you look at Sentech's wasted WiMax spectrum I can see this cable going to waste as well.

I don't think you have to worry about that in the greater scale of things. They are not the controlling interest so a plan could be made quickly.

 

[AndrewAlston]

I have to say, I am truely shocked by this decision. MyWireless was an abysmal failure, and Sentech cried lack of funding. But, lets look at other times Sentech has tried to play in the Internet Space.

Sentech was handed 500 MILLION RAND by the Government to connect a series of schools. This was a while back, I stand open to correct, but I believe 3 years ago. Currently, and again, I'm open to correction, almost ALL of those schools still sit without the promised connectivity.

Sentech's response? We don't have enough budget to do this...

(This is all a matter of public record btw)

Now, I have to ask the question, if Sentech can't connect a bunch of schools with that kind of money, what on earth are they doing trying to land a submarine cable?

Is this yet another plan to lay hands on more money to fund an organization that has shown that even given substantial capital it cannot deliver on its mandate?

We have broadband infraco licensed to provide wholesale bandwidth, that is their mandate, so why is yet another government organization getting involved in the same space?

While competition is good, is it really a good thing to have two seperate government entities trying to compete in the same space? I can't see the logic behind this at all.

Further more, I would love to see how Sentech plans to justify the landing of this cable within their mandate, it is NOT their line of business, and if they are claiming they don't have the resources to actually deliver on their own line of business, why are they now investing in other lines outside this. Will this be an attempt to generate funds to fund other activities? I don't know, but the questions do need to be asked. And if this is the case, what sort of profit margins can we expect on this cable system? Again, these are unknown factors.

I'll be watching this one with extreme interest, though I have to admit, I view this with a fair amount of skepticism.

I have to state, the views above are 100% my own and are in no way representative of TENET or any other organization to which I am affiliated.

 

[ponder]

No offence but stick to what you guys are doing seeing you are doing a good job, don't worry about the idiots. Things have a way of sorting themselves out, even if it is at the expensive of us the tax payers

 

[dominic]

wtf?

- this is within infraco's mandate (wired long-distance) not sentech's (wireless long distance)
- what exactly is sentech going to do to distribute bandwidth once it is landed?

perhaps everyone else is involved in landing a different cable and sentech represented a scraping of the barrel?

re Sentech
- they were awarded R500m funding for connecting Dinaledi schools. The DoC took this money back as a result of Sentech's inability to come up with a proper plan to spend it (leave aside the question of how this amount was arrived at in the first place). So not a case of no funding.
- my view is that they also had sufficient funding for mywireless but did not have the ability to provide a consumer service (& grossly underestimated the challenges of doing this). Cabinet has now taken a decision that no telecoms state owned enterprises will be involved in the retail sector - hence the closure of mywireless and the awarding of only an IECNS (and not an IECS) licence to Infraco

I have to state, the views above are 100% my own and are in no way representative of TENET or any other organization to which I am affiliated.

I have no doubt that TENET's lawyer would approve

 

[ProAsm]

Sentech will land 1.92 Tbps ACE cable

Baharicom Development Company signs a landing party agreement with Sentech for the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable

Oh boy!
Here we go again

 

[ic]

@dominic, just wondering how this happened, how did Sentech manage to get in on ACE which is clearly Broadband Infraco's territory, who made this decision, was it from the new MoC, the DTI, maybe Mantoes many months back whilst she was the pretend-MoC, or even Poison Ivy and Stalin-Mafole...

 

[dominic]

first i have heard of it so no idea really - would have had to have been approved by the generalissimo tho

very weird - will be nice to get some more info on this

 

[Sting]

Would love to know the motivation behind the decision... why does Sentech need this capacity?

 

[ic]

first i have heard of it so no idea really - would have had to have been approved by the generalissimo tho

very weird - will be nice to get some more info on this

Hopefully the journos will corner General Siphiwe when the festive season comes to an end, I really want to know how he justifies such an arse-faced decision.