Telecoms competition arrives in numbers

Well, the immediate effect will be that ISP's can connect to each other using Microwave or Infra-Red or just-plain-cable. This may seem like a small thing, but, previously it was not allowed, and previously they were forced to use teklom.

Within 3 months we should see a drop in latency figures as data routing becomes direct, and then we'll start to see money spent by ISP's on things like their own News servers and their own cache'ing and mirror environment. Perhaps one or two will get inventive and bring out locally based services for their customers that beat the crap out of youtube and DSTV, because using their own infrastructure to do this will now make it feasible.
 
Finally a good news monday. I was gettin so used to waking up on a monday and reaching for the vaseline as I read the news.
 
cool that we are getting local competition going... just international bandwidth will still be a problem.

If local bandwidth/hosting drops considerably, I'm sure many web sites / services will move back to our shores, thus the need for international will drop. Let hope something good comes from all of this.

Neotel releases NeoFlex today???
 
“Viva la competition!” said Roeld Diedericks
Did Roelf change his name? :p
 
This is really good news. As the Seacom deadline is nearing you will read more and more telscum propaganda about how the prices will not be falling, "because of the cost of infrastructure".

I mean, we have already read articles about how a leased line from Cape Town to Johannesburg is more expensive than a line from Johannesburg to London.

With the self providing law we can now look forward to the actual savings from Seacom filtering down to us, the consumers. Not what we would have had: Telscum pocketing the savings while inflating the cost for local links.

Go Altech!
 
While this is great news for everybody, we must also realise we're going to go into a bit of a Wild West environment for the next few years. And a lot of people will get burned.

As with any new environment that opens up, many new entrants will try and construct a service and will sell this successfully (at first), typically based on low pricing and promises of high levels of service (bandwidth / cap / latency).

So there will be flood of new offerings resulting in a surge of uptake. But many of the players will get their business models wrong, will not realise the complexities of running a network / ISP or the capital investment required.

Their service will suffer and eventually there will be a market shakeout ( in the next 3 to 5 years) with a small number of players left. And in the process a lot of consumers will get hurt as their SP's close down.

The above is just the reality of a new frontier opening up in a free market system and will definitely happen in this case. The one positive thing is that it will drive prices down for everybody.

So expect interesting times ahead. :)
 
does some one have a link to the list of VANS who now have new licenses. ICASA site is not very friendly.
 
vodacom3g said:
The one positive thing is that it will drive prices down for everybody.
Click to expand...

This is only a side effect of the actual big positive. We'll be able to choose.

I say bring on the Wild West, I'll take it over our Stalinist East any day ;-)
 
BruceS said:
This is only a side effect of the actual big positive. We'll be able to choose.

I say bring on the Wild West, I'll take it over our Stalinist East any day ;-)
Click to expand...

For sure, nothing like a free market.

But watch how the complaints will be posted on this forum in the next 24 to 36 months about how SO many ISP's are SO unreliable and there should be some sort of regulation in terms of quality, etc.

Guess pre-paid would be the way to go with anyone.
 
vodacom3g said:
But watch how the complaints will be posted on this forum in the next 24 to 36 months about how SO many ISP's are SO unreliable and there should be some sort of regulation in terms of quality, etc.
Click to expand...

i think you are right but i am also struck by the thought:
"business as usual then"
 
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