Small players can vie with big brother
Dial-up internet connectivity is not a good option now that affordable broadband services are available, says Hans Weinke, CEO of Hetzner, a web-hosting company.
He says broadband is essential to access international websites, download files and engage in online shopping, internet banking or online trading, which are painfully slow with dial-up access.
“Access to websites is often slowed down by encryption process.”
An application that requires broadband is podcasting. A user can subscribe to a service offering prerecorded audio and sometimes video content that they can download, he says.
In addition, software tools are available that allow company employees and business partners to collaborate on documents and projects over the internet. Individuals can work from anywhere and access files from their back-office systems.
He says at property consultant client Procon SA’s website customers can view a video of high-end property.
Another client, the Palmiet Wine and Country Estate guest house and wine farm, offers a 360 degree tour of the inside accommodation and allows zooming in on specific areas.
“These are small businesses, which proves it does not take a multimillion rand organization to do this.”
Interactive online gaming is another application that is attracting participants, Wenke says.
He says bandwidth costs are relative to the distance the content has to travel and the number of carriers competing for business in the area.
There has been substantial investment in infrastructure between European countries and between Europe and the US to support the high volume of electronic trading and general internet usage, Wenke says.
He says broadband is 30 times faster that dial-up internet access, although speeds drop at times when the service becomes clogged. This can happen while connecting to the ISP or from traffic congestion as the signal travels across the network nodes that make up the internet.
Companies often try to address the issue of slow connectivity to the ISP by upgrading their connection, but a more effective alternative is to implement a bandwidth managed solution to allow online activity to be prioritized.
For example, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls are more critical than e-mail and web-browsing, except perhaps for certain websites crucial to the business, Wenke says.
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