Vumatel beats Telkom despite years of monopoly advantage

[Jan]

South Africa's fibre war goes nuclear

Vumatel broke Telkom's fixed-line broadband monopoly in South Africa and established itself as the leader in the fibre-to-the-home market.

Telkom must now play catch-up in an area it dominated for over a decade and enjoyed a tremendous advantage.

 

[My_King]

Good.

 

[My_King]

 

[Polymathic]

At the current rate of uptake Openserve (Telkom) will only need go pass 77,000 more homes to overtake Vumatel in actual customers.

 

[Sapphiron]

While competition is good, the consolidation that is happening around Vodacom or Telkom Fiber does not bode well. We need way more than just 2 big fiber providers to keep pricing reasonable.

We need more medium sized, highly flexible and highly efficient fibre providers. Giant inefficient monsters like Telkom and Vodacom(Vumatel, DFA, and Vodacom) are never going to be good for the consumer.

 

[Sapphiron]

Still the old government mentality.
No visionaries hungry for success.

I would argue it's more of a large organization mentality. This happens to all the large corporates as well.

 

[Vorastra]

This seems like a weird fairytale rendition of reality where everything is roses and butterflies for Vumatel yet it seems in reality that people who have Openserve are happy on average and people who have Vumatel are constantly moaning with cost being the main issue.

What a bizarre article to read.
Doesn't seem based in reality.

 

[Johand]

This seems like a weird fairytale rendition of reality where everything is roses and butterflies for Vumatel yet it seems in reality that people who have Openserve are happy on average and people who have Vumatel are constantly moaning with cost being the main issue.

What a bizarre article to read.
Doesn't seem based in reality.

I am not sure about the Vumatel cost issue and whether Vumatel objectively has bad pricing - the economy is tough and a lot of people are just squeezed on essentials. I think for example that R1200/month for my 500/250 connection is a fair price. It compares well with international pricing for suburbian areas (you cannot compare dense city pricing) OpenServe is technically supposed to be able to be a *LOT* cheaper than Vumatel because they had infrastructure in place already -- the fact that they are only a little bit cheaper means that their margins are probably much higher.

My experience with Vumatel's service has also been a lot better than what I experienced with OpenServe during ADSL days. I once had an issue and Vumatel was on-site within 3 hours to resplice my cable and I was up and running. City of Cape Town severely damaged a Vumatel line in front of a friend's house, so bad that the entire street needed to get new fibre lines - Vumatel was there on Sunday morning after the muni finished Saturday evening and by Monday afternoon they had put in new fibre for the entire street and respliced all the individual houses. When I still had ADSL it took 4 weeks for a technician to respond.

I think Vumatel is doing well. Obviously competition makes them better but SA is a much, much better place because of them. Without them OpenServe wouldn't have woken up for one.

 

[Polymathic]

This seems like a weird fairytale rendition of reality where everything is roses and butterflies for Vumatel yet it seems in reality that people who have Openserve are happy on average and people who have Vumatel are constantly moaning with cost being the main issue.

What a bizarre article to read.
Doesn't seem based in reality.

The devil is in how you read the data.

The article could be reframed as "Telkom Destroys Vumatel With Fibre Uptake"

 

[Vorastra]

to be a *LOT* cheaper than Vumatel because they had infrastructure in place already -- the fact that they are only a little bit cheaper means that their margins are probably much higher.

Oh wait, didn't Vumatel recently double everyone's speed? I'm looking at pricing now, and they don't seem as jarring as they used to.

 

[Mawirepower]

Oh wait, didn't Vumatel recently double everyone's speed? I'm looking at pricing now, and they don't seem as jarring as they used to.

Yeah, quite competitive now. I'm on Vuma's 50/50 for R649. I was paying R725 for 20/10 before that.

 

[sammi01]

Cannot compare ADSL with Openserve fibre.
Moved from Vumatel to Openserve when OS dropped prices a while ago (last year?). No issues.

 

[sl0m0_za]

I cannot even get ADSL as Telkom ABANDONED their infrastructure in my town. No fibre here either.....