When we will see dramatically cheaper broadband

I think it'll be another year before prices drop.
When Telkom announced their price structures for the next year they could have promised a review after the Seacom launch but they didn't because they have the opportunity to rob us some more.
 
Of course everybody is going to "hedge their bets"... nobody wants to be wrong... not even me. It will be far easier to say, "oh I was wrong" when prices do fall, than "prices are GOING to fall!" and then they don't. Nobody wants to be quoted on making promises in this market.

He adds, however, that we will see a steady, curved drop in pricing over the next 12 months until we hit a "price point where we say ‘wow, this is acceptable'."
Click to expand...

I say Six Months.... before the end of the year.
 
"The big price change will be when Eassy comes on as well," says De Nobrega, "so you're talking a year from now".
Click to expand...

But thats what they said would happen when SEACOM landed. Lol, these guys are a joke, we will never get great prices until the local loop monopoly changes.

But even when LLU occurs, what will the excuses be then?
 
Prices will get lower before the end of the year but a year or two before we get uncapped 8 meg lines for under R1000.

We keep on having the same arguement ! Its like flogging a dead modem.
 
I'm still guessing that Telkom is going to make a nice announcement for us... around... September or October. ;) Watch this space! :p
 
The problem is that while we wait for prices to drop, SA is getting further and further behind. By the time we have the same type of internet connections in SA as they have in the rest of the world (8mb to 24mb, no caps, only line speed counts) the rest of the world will probably have 100mbps or more as a standard.

And I don't mean 8mbps as a possibility by bonding multiple lines, then paying more than your average salary for the "uncapped" part, I mean 8mbps as an entry level speed, caps don't feature in the pricing structure, and it costs a fraction of your salary. (Eg. in todays terms, like R200 per month, all inclusive)

Unless we, SA as a whole, push for dramatic changes in the cost of broadband internet NOW, we won't ever have real broadband internet.

How will SA ever compete globally when we are 5 years behind the times?
 
Starting to think we will never have cheap bandwidth. 5 years ago these developments would have been unthinkable. We would be jumping up and down in excitment with this news. But at each milestone we have seen over this time nothing has materialised. I am starting to lose all hope... Please let me be wrong.
 
He is contradicting himself... If contracts are ending in 2 to 3 years, then how will EASSy bring down prices in a year if they are then "contractually" still bound by another year to SAT3?

How are these contracts priced? If it is a question that you need to pay for x usage per month, then surely everything over that can be routed via SEACOM? until your contract expires...

and if his babbling is correct, then whoever's contract expires soonest will/can take the market over by pricing on the SEACOM cable :eek:

I still say we can learn a lot about spinning from these guys...factually, well you decide.
 
ok, but so what if adsl goes throught telkom - vodacom use wifi from modem to tower.

All vodacom need to do is get their own infrastructure from the towers to the Seacom connection.

or am I missing something?
 
maybe in 100 years.

This is really so full of s-h-i-t its frightening really, and actually all this talk boils down to greed.

Whats stopping a new ISP coming online and buying bandwidth from seacom and offering services at acceptable prices....... GREED. thats that.

And it doesn't matter about the whole IP connect from telkom thing, its been there since the beginning so if there is now an international drop then we should see some results.

I think what we need to do now is instead of jumping over to an ISP because they are offering broadband at -10% we will only jump if they give us over 50%, so down with all the possible new ISPs that is gearing up to rip us off, FU.
 
If these guys worked for Bush and Blair, they would have won the wars :) At least we would be thinking that they did :P
 
"That IP Connect will cost me R390 000 for a 140Mbps line." "That cost is probably more than what I'm paying for that capacity on the Seacom cable," he says matter-of-factly.
Click to expand...
So, inter-connecting with Telkom costs R2785 per MB/s.
I am going to assume that that price is per month.

This is to get the data from an ADSL user onto the ISP's network.
Then, he says that the cost for a similar chunk of Seacom's cable is probably less than that.
So, lets assume that it's the same: R2785 per MB/s.

So far we have under R6000 per MB/s.

Now, he added that:
With international pricing having come down, "we're already very close to the price of national bandwidth," he says.
Click to expand...

I am not quite sure how this computes, because the only price I know about for national bandwidth is Telkom's pricing for local-only adsl broadband, which is subsidised by other factors.

So ... all I need to to to work out the actual cost, it that wee little fact that everyone refuses to make public: The cost of the "price of national bandwidth".

Any takers?

Note the complete and utter lack of reasoning for the existence of the CAP policy.
 
Last edited:
Exactly, all an ISP with a 'contract' needs to do it open another ISP with no contractual ties and then once the their contract expires merge the two. At least this is what I would do.
 
I say if an ISP has a good special on, everyone goes onto that ISP. other ISP's will see this and lower prices too. if they do, we jump back to that one, and so on.

it needs to be done together for best results - perhaps a website showing the best ISP deal there is at that moment in time.

If they don't want to lower prices, we will jump around to others until they do. we need to stimulate competition ourselves.
 
Yes, the Local Loop can be completely bypassed by Wireless technology... and there are enough wireless providers out there now who all have access to Seacom to make a big difference!

I also don't buy the contracts argument... these providers have known that Seacom is coming for well more than a year now. Surely someone with some business sense would have made space for a new contract with Seacom as well as SAT-3. To sign new contracts with Telkom and to ignore Seacom is just plain stupid and business suicide.
 
It is a shocking indictment of Telkom that local bandwidth costs MORE than international bandwidth relayed over an undersea cable for 15000km. Surely, surely, this is a case for ICASA or at least the competition board, if ever there was one?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X