Undersea cable war begins

[ShaunSA]

The Department of Communications is poised to make policy announcements aimed at severely curtailing Neotel's ability to land the Seacom East Coast cable in SA, sources say.

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2007/0708171100.asp?A=BRO&S=Broadband&O=FPLEAD

 

[semiautomatix]

WTF? This bullsh!t makes me want to swear! Can't the goverment get there fat sticky fingers out of the d@mn pie! Goverment initiatives have failed dismally in the past - let commercial efforts have a go. IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG WITH HAVING TOO MUCH BANDWIDTH??!?!?

 

[Conspirator]

WTF? Not only incompetent, but greedy on top of it. I believe this calls for an email campaign.

I realize that some of these people are too farking stupid to get something done, but must they also harm and hamper everyone else...

 

[The_Unbeliever]

At a press conference in July, Shope-Mafole indicated government was not in favour of commercial cables such as Seacom and its potential rival Eassy (the East African Submarine Cable System) landing in SA. She noted the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure network was considering laying its own East Coast cable.

[nasty comments edited out]

bah, humbug!

 

[Leitmotif]

'tch. Someone didn't get their kickbacks.

 

[BobbyMac]

'tch. Someone didn't get their kickbacks.

Yep. Same as Radebe and the Monorail.

 

[MFour]

This leaves a in my stomach....

 

[bekdik]

At the time, Shope-Mafole said government did not believe commercial cables would bring down the cost of broadband in SA and government initiatives would be needed.

If commercial cables won't bring the cost down, then they would cost more than government initiatives, so where's the risk to government?

Sorry, but I just don't understand the logic here.

 

[ToxicBunny]

There is no logic...

They're trying to make some excuse that government is better (or they're not getting kickbacks)

 

[Alchemist]

Well, I'm off to Europe in a week for a holiday, maybe it's time to have a look and see what opportunities there are. Because, currently with each that passes, government aren't giving me any reason to stay.

 

[Inertia]

Someone punch me in the face please

 

[Alchemist]

Someone punch me in the face please

*punch*

Feeling better yet?

 

[cybershark]

Oilgate, now Telecomgate!

Greedy gov bastards!

 

[ldmelsa]

I actually get physically sick.

 

[fskmh]

Seacom and Neotel will provide Tenet with international bandwidth at a price that is over 500 times cheaper than current rates.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/1005.html

The Department of Communications is poised to make policy announcements aimed at severely curtailing Neotel's ability to land the Seacom East Coast cable in SA, sources say.

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2007/0708171100.asp?A=BRO&S=Broadband&O=FPLEAD

I believe this makes it clear that government has no intention of lowering the costs of telecommunications in S.A., at least, not at the expense of relaxing its centralist grip on it. The statement from Shope-Mafole that "government did not believe commercial cables would bring down the cost of broadband in SA and government initiatives would be needed" is disingenuous. If they really believed that why would they bother to impede commercial initiatives? Surely they would allow them to fail publicly, which would prove their position correct? One can therefore only conclude that the opposite must be true; government fears a medium that they have no controlling influence over. It would also appear that the success of a market-controlled initiative would be intolerable for government since they have failed so miserably in theirs. Whether this is simply out of spite or a profound lack of vision, it doesn't change the outcome that our digital coming of age will be delayed that much longer. The deleterious effects on business and missed employment opportunities will continue. Academics will remain isolated from Grid activities like ALICE (http://hep.phy.uct.ac.za/) and Internet2/GÉANT networks for data exchange needed for the success of SKA/MeetKAT (http://www.ska.ac.za/projectoffice/directory.shtml). It will also undermine SANReN and the African Virtual Observatory (an online data archive envisaged store data from the SALT, HartRAO and HESS telescopes).

 

[Inertia]

*punch*

Feeling better yet?

Much better. Thank you

 

[icyrus]

The free flow of information is not the government's friend.

The general population having cheap, reliable access to an information source such as the internet probably scares the life out of our government.

 

[Road runner]

The free flow of information is not the government's friend.

The general population having cheap, reliable access to an information source such as the internet probably scares the life out of our government.

Well put! I feel like printing this and framing it above my door

 

[koffiejunkie]

Mbeki announced government's broadband infrastructure supplier, Infraco

.......

Infraco is a Department of Public Enterprises initiative.

Public Enterprises - oh dear! Alec Erwin is going to be in charge...

 

[ToxicBunny]

1 x Bolt excuse to be changed to Terrorism, when the network goes down cos some moron unplugged the Core Routers to plug in the vacuum cleaner