Would the real Telkom 2 please stand up?
This monster was born, from what I recall, around 6 years ago, when the SNO was still going to be a real competitor rather than a boxed-in little WiMax-like commercial “study”.
It was one of those interesting tidbits that came out in conversation with some or other interested party, but no one ever really cared about or did anything with. I remember being decidedly cynical about the news…
Born from the gift of huge reserves of already-installed local unlit fiber, out popped Broadband Infraco.
Several years and bordering on R2bn in investment in-between, this company is the latest Golden Chariot, very specifically targeted at “fixing” in its entirety broadband connectivity in South Africa.
At least that is what its mandate says it’ll be doing. And in fact, this company actually has the back end to support the dream.
The advantages of all the existing fibre mean there will be no rollout of national infrastructure. It’s already rolled-out, even to places which existing operators wouldn’t be very interested in rolling-out to. And it’s not some old-tech copper system either. It’s high-capacity, theft-proof, fully digital fibre optic backbone network.
Add Eassy as Broadband Infraco’s equivalent of SAT-3, and you have a formidable national carrier indeed.
No voice? Well, VoIP has so quickly become interchangeable with PSTN voice that it’s basically a non-issue. In 2010, we communicate using data.
This company has the muscle to roll out virtually-free high-speed internet access to South African cities which haven’t even begun to join this modern global information economy. It is in fact mandated to do just that, and force Telkom’s hand in the slashing of true broadband pricing.
But that isn’t what it’s doing, after all.
No instead it’s taking the admittedly overripe purely greed-mongering approach of selling itself on a purely wholesale basis to ISPs and network operators across SA at competitive costs.
One can’t help thinking, however, that simply lighting-up all this high-capacity fibre is a good thing for the growth of SA internet usage?
That’s exactly why I’m quite excited about the current situation. Although technically the most blatant case of collusion in the public eye today with the State the controlling shareholder in both competing entities, Broadband Infraco has to be cheaper and/or better than Telkom at providing high-speed true broadband connections.
Even if it’s mismanaged and poorly handled like the other State-controlled networking behemoth in the headlines in the last week or so, Broadband Infraco stands to make obscene profits rivalling even the monolithic Telkom simply by doing what it is doing, ignoring its mandate and just going straight for the jugular of corporate SA and selling enormous amounts of capacity at a slightly lower than normal price.
It will still be superb for the local internet user on the whole. Raw cynicism aside of course.
We know it has the assets to deliver.
It basically just needs the staff to operate and maintain these assets now, and some sort of route for the market to come to it through, and Telkom 2 Broadband Edition, or at least Broadband Infraco, will be able to take the WWE-style “fight” to the monolithic incumbent.
Always good for some light entertainment that. But the going-live of this local network could also, in conjunction with the plummeting prices of international bandwidth being driven by other recent developments like SEACOM, bring that much-vaunted “true broadband experience” to SA Web users.
The real Telkom 2 << discussion
Loading ...