What we're missing out on.

[mbs]

Dammit - and here I thought I was going to get away from this soapbox! Anyway, Mithrandi is quite correct in that technological innovation inspires all those good things consequent and inevitably promotes a free market economy - the point is that in reality this only works until recognition of advantage at the expense of others, which inevitably then leads to the 'downsides' spoken about earlier. This applies equally to the totally regulated environment. I believe that *some* regulation precludes this to *some* extent, hopefully making society better for all... At the end of the day, I suppose we all just have to be on our toes and not let the free marketers or the dictatorial regulators get away with it - more power to forums like MyADSL!! 'Nuff said, no more, finito, finish...!

 

[Pandion]

Just for the guys getting ISDN, good luck guys, in my experience it wasn't worth it. My phone bill was around R2000/month for my ISDN, and the R7 weekend when for a pile of ****, since you normally get cut off at least twice a weekend. Not to mention that to get 128k, it costs you 2 phone calls = 2 x R7 = R14. And I found that every now and then I needed to go online for a shortwhile during the day, which absolutely exploded my bill.

I finally upgraded to ADSL about 3 weeks ago, and despite all the issues (cap etc), it's still worth my R800/month. And as more and more people join the ZAHub, it becomes more and more worth it.

Even if you can keep your ISDN at under R600/month, the extra R200 I pay is worth it just for being online 24/7.

 

[Strobemeister]

Wow, this was my first post, u sure trawl deep Pandion.
I have to disagree with you, however. For me, ISDN is still the best option for me, mainly because i use it almost exclusively offpeak. I went for the 64k so i don't pay for 2 lines. Browsing is just fine, though of course the multimedia sites take longer. Gaming on the local servers is great, though slower than the adsl guys. Overseas servers, ISDN is better than ADSL.
I run it every night 7 to 7, and all w/end, & my bill is around R500/month, all in.
ADSL is obviously better performance in most areas, but i'm not capped and my bill is lower.
And my ISDN line has never dropped.
If i compare my previous ADSL line in the UK with my ISDN line, then obviously i've taken a big step down.
I just think i've made the best of a crap situation.
If i'd written this a coupla months ago, i'd say that not a lot has changed in the last year since i've been back, but given recent events i'm very hopeful.


Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.

 

[Jerrek]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by noone</i>
<br />Fine, but how come Australia is able to offer their customers the same price as in the Europe/US ?

It seems to me only South Africa is charging a truckload for the little bandwidth we get.

So review your argument about the whole "laying fibre optics for 10000 kms" look at australia who ALSO has to lay cable, and THEIR pricing structure!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
They don't. Australia has caps and is quite a bit more expensive.


And if you think the UK is fast, you're quite mad. They can barely get over 1 Mb!