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Question of the Day: Have you ever ordered a product online and received a fake knock-off?
The revolution sweeping SA telecoms
Turiko
Banned
More crap that is not worth reading... Thanks a lot.
kronoSX
Honorary Master
And to see the change in on a real scale could take months
And there I was thinking that prices had dramatically come down in the last 4 years. They'll come down even more in the next 2.
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Well nothing could change before, we had Telkom's infrastructure and Telkom's undersea cables to run everything off.
For the first time (by 2010) we'll have new fibre networks accross the country and 3 or more international cables. How could things not get better by then, even if it isn't too soon.
ads
Senior Member
I think Duncan's point is that it IS real this time. It may not yet be obvious to end users, but there are real changes happening in the industry that will have an impact. Simply having Neotel offering physically separate infrastructure changes the basic structure of the market. Whilst only a few large users have yet experienced the changes, they will filter down through the market. Some of the potential ownership changes could be equally dramatic. It's by no means business as usual, and Telkom is really threatened - reading their CEO's comments.
Dosti
Well-Known Member
Competition and lower prices
Media sensationalist reporting, and what competition, Neotel will float because the government promised moving it's data support network from Telkom, which is a large percentage. All the major role players brag about their business moves and how they take business from Telkom, they do not have b...s to challenge Telkom in it's diverse network coverage, they only provide in high density concentrated business or population areas, let see you suckers cover rural network development and deployment on same scale as Telkom and survive. So much for social responsibilty and lower prices, or shareholder returns, who is calling BLUFF.
Media sensationalist reporting, and what competition, Neotel will float because the government promised moving it's data support network from Telkom, which is a large percentage. All the major role players brag about their business moves and how they take business from Telkom, they do not have b...s to challenge Telkom in it's diverse network coverage, they only provide in high density concentrated business or population areas, let see you suckers cover rural network development and deployment on same scale as Telkom and survive. So much for social responsibilty and lower prices, or shareholder returns, who is calling BLUFF.
In the meantime we have fallen even further behind the rest of the world in internet connectivity. I certainly don't measure progress in this area by marginal price decreases alone.
Even if telkom died their long anticipated death it would not change the status quo of telecoms in SA. The problem has never been telkom but government and that hasn't changed. Like Syndyre pointed out, everyone expects government to become even more involved in telecoms, not less. This, of course, makes perfect sense if you consider how the ANC have run and will continue to run this country.
Cheap, unfettered access to non-state-sanctioned information is not high on the list of anc priorities.
Exactly, they don't want their voters to have access to that information IMO. At the moment it doesn't matter to them because most of the people with internet access probably don't vote ANC anyway.
Turiko
Banned
Yes, it is a form of censorship if you think of it. They certainly don't want the masses to be enlightened about how corrupt they really are. I predict that sooner or later, there will be draconian censorship as in China, in this country and crit-ing the goverment, even on a forum like this will result in jail time or torture
Maybe but if they do it this way they can achieve the same aim without having to appear like a dictatorship. You allow free speech, but only amongst a small, isolated group. They won't need to do more as long as they still have 60%+ of the population voting for them. If they run the risk of losing then all bets are off though, just look at what happened in Zim.
I disagree with your opinion of Goverment being the ones to carry sole blame for this situation. The problem has, and IMO, will always be profit taking.
The reason we are where we are is largely becuase of the above statement. In the absense of competition they filled their pockets, and honestly, if I was an investor I would have done the same. So we sit with a Telkom that has the coverage that no other player can match, but unfortunatly for them and ultimately the consumer, is that now instead of capitalising on that they have to spend billions on infrastructure.
And IMO when they are done, and hopefully soon, Telkom will be a major force in the market. No other player can offer services to virtually every corner of SA.
So in other words you disagree with my assessment then back it up? Telkom did exactly what every other business would do in their position, but they were put and kept in that position by government. Government created and maintained the conditions for telkom, gave them all the infrastructure paid for by tax payers and then gave them carte blanch to do what they wanted to the SA consumer. No matter how you dress it up, all the blame lies at government's door.