International bandwidth costs holding broadband back
"MTN announced and demonstrated HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) while WBS announced another broadband product in the market," says Smith. However, he points out that neither product is radically different from anything else in the market.
While MTN says HSDPA will provide initial downlink speeds of up to 1.4 Megabits per second (Mbps) and later up to 3.6 Mbps, Smith says Sentech’s MyWireless product is already capable of downlink speeds of 3 Mbps.
Similarly, WBS is offering a package of 210MB of data for R195 per month which is nothing new. Sentech was already offering a 200 MB package at R199 while MTN and Vodacom have a myriad of low-usage options.
"This is just obfuscation via semantics; the industry needs to get down to talking about the real issues," he says.
And the real issues, according to Smith, are speed and cost. Users want the fastest speeds at the cheapest cost. When users compare the prices they pay and the speeds they get versus what users overseas receive, then they are sorely disappointed.
This will continue to be the case until something is done about international bandwidth in South Africa.
"Currently Sentech, together with every other broadband provider, is restrained by one major factor – the cost of international bandwidth," Smith said.
"Sentech could provide the speeds users wish for. MyWireless is capable of reaching 3Mbps on the downlink side, but the cost of international bandwidth prevents us from offering anything more that 512 Kilobits per second (Kbps),” he continued.
All the other providers are restrained in the same way and until something is done about the costs of international bandwidth, users will continue to receive slower connection speeds for more than they they’d like to pay, Smith says.
As faster speeds are available, he says the various providers are also going to have to look at the issues of data bundles, capping and updating users on the amount of bandwidth they have used.
"If Sentech were to offer speeds of 3 Mbps, users would be able to download one Gigabyte of data in less than ten minutes. The industry will therefore have to re-visit the issue of data bundles and caps on accounts," he says.
All broadband providers are also going to have to look at the way they inform users how much bandwidth they have consumed, otherwise users could run up large bills very quickly without being aware of it, Smith concludes.
The issue of international bandwidth and Telkom’s monopoly on SAT3 access has been a contentious issue for a long time, with various parties asking government to intervene.
ICASA has also indicated that they will be looking into this valuable resource, but it is unlikely that much will happen in this arena soon.
EASSy, a direct competitor to SAT3, should provide more affordable international bandwidth to broadband providers, but the question remains whether we can afford to wait until 2008.
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