What happened to these projects?
Over the last few years many high profile companies have announced exciting projects to benefit South Africans, but some of these projects fell far short of the hype which accompanied them.
While good ideas are of value, effective execution is just as important to ensure that a project is successful.
Over the years many promising initiatives fell victim to poor execution, red tape and lengthy delays. This includes projects from Vodacom, Super 5 Media and Google.
Here are some South African Internet and broadband projects which never really got off the ground.
Jake White YouTube channel and blog
Jake White
On 23 July 2008, former Google SA head Stafford Masie announced the launch of former springbok coach Jake White’s YouTube channel and blog on Blogger.
At the time, White’s presence on the two Google platforms was accompanied by lots of hype, but his YouTube and Blogger updates quickly fizzled out.
White’s last blog post was on 17 September 2008 – less than two months after it was launched.
The Jake White Youtube channel did even worse. The last update was on 22 July 2008, which means that there was not a single video uploaded after the initiative was launched.
Vodacom broadband one account
Vodacom World
In June 2007 Vodacom announced that it was working on an innovative new broadband account which may allow their subscribers to have a single account across all broadband services.
The plan was that Vodacom subscribers could use a single account to access any of the operator’s broadband services: 3G, ADSL, and WiFi.
This never happened, and six years later Vodacom customers still have to use multiple accounts to access all of Vodacom’s broadband services.
SouthTel VOD:TV
SouthTel VoD:TV Interface
In June 2011 SouthTel announced that it was trialling a video-on-demand (VOD) service called “SouthTel Push VOD:TV”.
SouthTel promised to bring local consumers “a thousand titles through our personal video recorder (PVR), within a few weeks/months after release”.
SouthTel planned to commercially launch its VOD services in September 2011, but two years later the company has gone quiet and no services have been launched.
Super 5 Media
Super 5 Media
Super 5 Media (formerly Telkom Media), was one of the four pay-TV operators licensed by ICASA in 2007 to take on MultiChoice’s DStv service.
The company planned to launch commercial services in June 2010, but this never happened. Media reports that year suggested that the company went belly up and retrenched all its staff.
However, in 2012 the company still applied for another license extension to offer pay-TV service in South Africa.
The Super 5 Media website still states that it is focused on providing converged services in the Information, Communications and Entertainment environment to stimulate demand for entertainment services in South Africa.
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