Taking on Telkom

[HosstheBoss]

A Ripple relay works via frequency injected into the power grid, Eskom is doing a country wide installation in the bigger municipal areas of consumption, the project is called DSM ....

Yeah, my understanding is rudimentary at best, so….
But I guess it sends out this same frequency across the entire grid, no way it sends it to a specific property, right? And I know quite a few adjustments are made on the relay at your property (depending on the water demand; residential, vs. B&B vs. hostel etc.) so the Municipal electrician told me

 

[HosstheBoss]

Uhem !! Excuse me but Nedbank's Idea of helping small businesses is uhh how should I say rediculous have you watched their requirements ?? 5 Million turnover must be reached every year !!

Sorry but for any "small business" to reach a 5 Million turnover per year isn't so "small" in any case !!!!!

5 mill classifies as small, remember in the real world (as opposed to Telkom lala land) most small business people don’t have massive profit margins (because they have to compete in order to stay in business as opposed to sitting on their fat asses playing monopoly), so a turn over of 5 mill isn’t that much considering all your expenses!

 

[supersunbird]

Well, maybe it would help if Futron actually listened to the ads:

Nedbank

Apply for a minimum of R100 000 finance from Nedbank for your NEW* FRANCHISE or STARTUP business and for the next two years, you’ll get:
FREE unlimited cheques
FREE unlimited debit orders
FREE unlimited cash deposits; and
FREE unlimited internet banking

DOES YOUR BUSINESS QUALIFY?
-This offer is available to small-sized franchisees and businesses that are in the initial phase and which are projecting an annual turnover of up to R5 million.

The following points apply:
- Your business must be a real business in the legal sense (sole proprietor, partnership, close corporation, or limited company)
- You must have been in operation under 24 months

 

[mcleodd]

Mr Mcleodd, can you plse confirm that they(GTS) are aiming for 90 MB/s? I know it is possible, but as many people have pointed out, that sort of connection would chew up bandwidth very quickly, and we all know how expensive bandwidth is in our beloved country! Can you also enlighten us on how they plan to get their international bandwidth, because Telkom or Sentech will not be able to supply?
Great Article by the way.

Adrian Maguire told me that GTS wants to deliver 90Mbit/s guaranteed (note, not 90MB/s). I presume that means from your house and into their central office and not beyond that. GTS needs that sort of bandwidth to deliver HDTV. There probably will be constraints on bandwidth use for Internet users because GTS will have to buy international bandwidth from Telkom, Neotel, Sentech (or whoever else is licensed to provide international gateway services by the time they launch their services commercially).

 

[SubLoony]

Yes, what supersunbird said...futron, i do my homework most of the time

 

[Roman4604]

I presume that means from your house and into their central office and not beyond that. GTS needs that sort of bandwidth to deliver HDTV. There probably will be constraints on bandwidth use for Internet users.

I suspected something like this was closer to the truth.

Just looking around current headend units (akin to a DSLAM in ADSL) max out at ~ 200Mbps of total throughput, so it would seem economically unfeasable to run 90 Mbps individually to each house. They will probably use a large portion of the headend's throughput to multicast (one-many) the HDTV streams and contend the rest for unicast (one-one) Internet data services, hence the ADSL type data speeds in their trials.

A slight case of marketing spin making it sound like each subscriber would get their own 90 Mbits of data throughput. Also the HDTV part seems very capital intensive, so much more cost effective & scalable to do it via satellite as you need the same transponder capacity whether you have 100 or 10,000,000 viewing subscribers irrespective of location.

 

[-toady-]

*However, is there anyone in SA selling PLC "modems" - I have not been able to find one though I am interested in participating in the Durban trial? *

Tis rather like beating my pointed head against a brick wall here..... but if you are genuinely interested then Allen Spence last read title being Superinendent of Electricity for Durban. is the man with ALL the answers. Try hunting him down via the Ethekwini Electricity Depts. Security section in erm, pinetown/new germany. If he declines to give you information, break his arm.....
In 2004 he and his Project team set up their test systems on our streetlight poles. Immediate chaos with our power supply and weird stuff all the time. Lights going on and off unaided. Melted power boxes. Damage to the PC etc. He informed me himself that this Project was called a Highly-technical computerised Anti-theft device and designed to prevent cable theft. As in the 30 years odd Ive lived at this address, this particular stretch of road has NEVER lost any cable, I was curious. As it happens it is merely that they were setting us up as the test area for their Big Brother Wireless link up. Why he is so coy as to call it an anti theft device for cables I cant understand. Unless they struggling to get the EMF levels right and there may be casualties in the process?
Very careful damage control is in place here. To ensure that my incessant babblings remain just that. Ah well...cest la vie....

GreenEaredToad

 

[Oupoot]

It was merely to have "free" internet access that I wanted to join trail. But I have other things to keep me occupied and my current internet subscription, though costly, is sufficient for my needs. But thanks anyway Toad. When the full results of the trail become available and BPL were successfully implemented, then I would probably sign up to cut unnecessary expenditure.