Who will win the broadband battle?

[ic]

Telkom has 5-7million landlines in SA. There are over 30million cell handsets currently in operation in SA, mostly Vodacom and MTN. So the potential customer base for the latter is much more than Telkom's. However, it is wrong to use these as base figures - one need to limit these ref points to those that also have computers / laptops. The potential BB market then suddenly drops quite dramatically (rough guess is about 2million). Only when computers / laptops is priced within an affordable range for the mass market in SA (<R2000) will the potential BB market increase resembling the 5-7 million Telkom or 30million+ cell customers.

I knew someone was going to raise the issue about the number of Telkodemonopolies lines being the reason for the low ADSL penetration rate, but it does not explain away the fact that the wireless broadband providers have in a much smaller timeframe managed to capture 50% of the broadband market which was almost exclusively controlled by Telkodemonopolies & its ADSL - why have 50% of broadband customers opted for a much more expensive wireless service instead of the [still] exorbitant ADSL service that Telkodemonopolies chooses not to provide in a timely manner and in relatively fewer areas compared to where HSDPA is available with combined coverage from Vodacom & MTN?

PS: What GC posted about dual-connectivity [ADSL + wireless] is also a factor specifically amongst most forumites, but hard to extrapolate into the more general broadband customer base...

 

[MFour]

You now what, I don't really care who wins the battle amongst the current Telecoms players. What I do know is that the Consumer is definately not going to to the winner, that is who should be the winner here, not the frigging industry...

 

[ic]

... ~200000 ADSL customers - in some countries that figure is turned over in a few months not years.

Yeah but you can't compare apples and oranges.
How many people in SA have computers at home?

Your point would hold water if it were not for the 50% of SA broadband customers who obviously do have PCs...

Whichever way you look at it, Telkodemonopolies has to be doing something very wrong to lose 50% to wireless competitors that charge even more than Telkodemonopolies does.

And the ADSL pricing is definitely not reasonable considering that it uses copper wires and not expensive radio equipment & multiple-base-stations per area. It costs Telkodemonopolies a lot less to deploy ADSL in an area than it does for Vodacom & MTN & iBurst SA to deploy their wireless networks, yet Telkodemonopolies still manages to fail despite holding all the broadband & telecoms cards...

Wireless should be far far cheaper to roll out than ADSL equipped exchanges.
DSLAMs are darn expensive and the ADSL infrastructure requires major system upgrades. Wireless doesn't require laying thousands of wires to each customer - the connection from the base stations to the customer is virtually free.

iBurst charges R 599/month for the G3 (3GB) package.
Cybersmart charges R125 for 3GiB (SAIX accounts) so iBurst's bandwidth costs for the G3 package can't be much more than about R125 if they go through SAIX.
That means the iBurst G3 rental is about R474/month and that excludes the very expensive hardware you have to buy.
Looks more like a failure of the wireless providers to provide a cheaper solution.

There are major costs involved with wireless base-stations - the radio equipment is expensive, finding a suitable site and actually putting up the mast [if there isn't an existing one] also costs a lot - and there has to be backup power to last the length of a short power failure, and then there is also the cost of Digicrap links where Telkodemonopolies gets its cut every month...

DSLAMs and port cards do not cost nearly as much as you suggest they do, and the ATM backbone infrastructure is mostly all there as well - Telkodemonopolies has you believing its propaganda...

 

[Pitbull]

The current setback for MTN & Vodacom is the latency.

Once the latency and Pings get to ADSL quality TELKOM will be out of it !

 

[cdi]

So I am one number in both columns, mobile and fixed, but the vast bulk of my usage is ADSL, because it is the only means available in SA for affordable broadband.

I Also use both but I don't agree none is affordable if they were everybody would have had some ADSL/HPSA link.
If they were affordable the growth would have been ten times what it is and the number of subscribers would have been in the millions not hundred thousands.

The only reason I have ADSL it is either that or nothing. I would have liked to have a fibre cable coming into my house or just unlimited bandwidth would also help. Not even mentioning paying twice for the telkom copper (Telephone/ADSL rental)

 

[Gatecrasher]

I Also use both but I don't agree none is affordable if they were everybody would have had some ADSL/HPSA link.

Agreed. When we talk about affordablility in this country it is a relative term. In absolute terms there is no affordable broadband in South Africa.

However, there is a big difference between R500/Gb and R6/Gb. What that tells me is that there is a whole heap of fat being sucked off the bones of consumers. If I could have resold my IS uncapped bandwidth via Vodacom's HSDPA last month, I could have raked in over a R100 000 in profit.

 

[d0b33]

So who will win the broadband battle? Sadly, there is only one competitor. Telkom's ADSL. My bandwidth cost per Gb last month? R6/Gb on an uncapped IS package.

ADSL (Capped) from R50/Gb
Iburst from R139/Gb
3G from R400/Gb
HSDPA from R500/Gb

So while there is plenty of competition for internet access, broadband is a one horse race.

I agree, ADSL is the only true broadband option for now,
But for most users it's still too expensive, wireless seems a better choice than ADSL for light surfing