We will be a player in the telecoms space, says DoC

MickeyD said:
nationalisation imminent?
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that was not clear to me - a lot of statements like "we cannot talk about broadband without talking about telkom" and how telkom will be central to an NBN...

i am still trying to coax life back into my brain but i invite you to think of the current situation as treading water with one foot
 
I assume todays workshop then was a reinforcement of the Polokwane agenda. The good news is that the more forceful and buster a group is in getting their agenda through the more likely it is that they know that there time is up.
 
they also spoke about the Policy Panel as if it was already in place - it will be charged with drafting the green and white papers on a national comprehensive ICT policy
 
No feedback to at least one of the nominees or publication of a shortlist or the slightest sound for more than three months

Without a short list there aren't candidates
 
The DoC said that it sees broadband as a utility, and that it has to be made available universally to all parts of the country.
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And in other news, the cANCer government has completely failed to provide housing, electricity and water (those are utilities).
 
I sense some dinosaurs tripping in communist lala-land somewhere behind the curtains. I'll make you a prediction. Everything in SA will be nationalised. Soon they will tell us what we can or can not buy. Then after about 20-40 years of suffering the communist regime will fall. Every precious bit of SA will be sold off for pittance to whoever has a bit of cash lying about. And then only will the poor of the country get a chance to work their way out of their misery.

That... Is communism. You can call it state capitalism till you are blue in the face. Look up the word "oxymoron" if you don't know it.

Why choose suffering? Didn't the ANC fight for "democracy" and a free and fair country. Wasn't it a democratic vote that ended apartheid? I ask you that.
 
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Randux said:
Are you for real? You say that based on what really? She's incompetent?
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Based on her performance - Telkom has bled customers, raised prices, fought LLU, lost enterprise marketshare, continued on their glacial speed upgrade of the ADSL network, and that's just off the top of my head.

Unless, of course, you've been really happy with Telkom recently?
 
"Zuma urges chiefs not to buy into legal practices of whites"

"Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man's way," Zuma told a cheering House of Traditional Leaders.
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You can just imagine this goes for business, the legal system and technology as well.

<Zuma voice> .. Let us not move forwards in this world <hehehe>, lets return to traditional methods of communication <hehehe> and start beating drums again to get the message across <that's one thing you can't believe>

Current government with their backwards thinking is not the enabler, it's the obstacle.
 
evilstebunny said:
"Zuma urges chiefs not to buy into legal practices of whites"

You can just imagine this goes for business, the legal system and technology as well.
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Don't buy into their legal practices - just buy their clothes, cars, houses and ... well ... everything else. VIVA AFRICA!
 
elvis_presley said:
Don't give up on copper - it might be 2nd prize, but it's what most the 1st world runs very well on - if the MSAN roll out completes and VDSL delivers widespread 40mbit, that's a good thing. Remember Telkom's busy doing this right now.

We'd all like fibre, but I think we'd all be pretty chuffed with 40+mbit VDSL. The private sector must come to the party and give us fibre. I'm more than happy for Telkom to provide a copper-based "safety net" until fibre ramps up. An attainable goal busy being implemented right now. Couple that with LLU, and we have a pretty good solution.

Of course while government keeps appointing nincompoops like Reuben September and Pinkie, even a widespread MSAN roll-out seems like a pipe dream.
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Look I'm just saying in reality there is currently no ISP that is geared to operate an unbundled copper local loop. There are tremendous operational challenges and support issues that haven't even been addressed in the LLU discussions. If ICASA implemented LLU today it will take at least another year or two before these models are properly resolved.

My gut feel is that LLU will actually lead to higher bandwidth pricing as you will have more companies involved with delivering a single service- currently Telkom is willing to do it for R140 per month for a standard Analogue line, because there is the possibility of an upsell of a broadband connection and subsequent ISP services. If however you remove the upsell component and you have to maintain the same infrastructure, then surely the "network access fee" needs to go up.

So when I say copper LLU, it's not really about the copper its about a business model that in my opinion, based on network maintenance experience, is not going to have the desired result in any event- which is cheaper, faster broadband.

We need to remove the cost of the civil access in order to make the investment decision for potential FTTH providers easier.

So in short, I'm not against the principle of telecoms being a standard utility. I'm just saying there's ways to implement private/ public participation by legislating the industry to address the actual issue of a very low connected society. The impact of not having broadband in rural and low cost areas is tremendous- imagine having to go through school currently without having internet access! In addition, the whole Limpopo text book saga could have been prevented by a R500 tablet and a basic broadband connection at every home. The real issue is not that it's a problem today, but that we'll only measure the effect of a poorly educated youth in 15 years time and that scares me!

It's easy to say leave Broadband to the industry specialists, but since the liberalisation of our industry 8 years ago, what progress have actually been made, by the so-called experts? I see ridiculous bonusses being paid and just about every sporting team sponsored by telecoms operators, yet we've slipped to 7th or 8th on the continent in terms of telecoms.

Now I'm not trying to be a bleeding heart liberal, but kids not having internet in this day and age makes me very scared for our beloved country in 10 to 15 years- and with a single figure broadband penetration rate, we will not be able to compete internationally. So we need to start facing this challenge differently.

Sorry went off on a tangent a bit, but I'm quite passionate about this topic :)
 
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