Fibre overload
The announcement that we are to get even more fibre optic cable dumped into the ground in SA should be good news for everyone. The problem is that as the situation exists at the moment it is not good news for those people that like their internet access fast, stable and uncapped.
The only way that consumers are going to get access to these networks is by making their connection to the internet over a wireless network to a base station connected to one of the new fibre networks.
The announcement that Cell C, Internet Solutions and Convergence Partners are going to spend an obscene amount of money on rolling out another national fibre network is good news as it will increase the amount of competition in the wholesale and corporate market, but for the consumers it isn’t going to herald the advent of real high-speed broadband.
This is mostly because it is still too expensive for these service providers to deliver fibre-optics to existing residential areas, condemning those of us that would prefer to live in houses that were built before we were born to using copper or the airwaves to get our connections.
Considering that the contention ratios on wireless networks always trend towards the sucky side of the spectrum, those people living in established suburbs and wanting to experience the next generation of the internet need a better deal.
If you are wondering what I consider to be the next generation of the internet, it is one dominated by video (in terms of traffic anyway). Already services such as Netflix are consuming greater and greater amounts of the available bandwidth in the US and we would really like to follow in those footsteps.
The key to this is local loop unbundling, freeing the consumers from decisions made by Telkom about how much ADSL services should cost and how fast they can go.
The announcement by the new minister of communications that this process will be done by this time next year is great news, but I seem to remember hearing promises of this sort before.
If the previous promises had been kept we would already be able to buy our ADSL lines without having to get a Telkom voice service.
Once the local loop is unbundled we should be able to get service providers to deliver real quality of service on our ADSL lines rather than the best effort that has been foisted on us by Telkom thus far. Real quality of service means that we should have the speeds to run video on demand services – DSTV on Demand may become the best part of your DSTV subscription.
Otherwise, start canvassing the neighbourhood to club together and run your own private fibre-optic network, and negotiate a good deal with Neotel or FibreCo or MTN or Vodacom or maybe even Telkom to deliver some real broadband to your house.
As for the minister’s intentions, I reckon this is the perfect benchmark to test whether he is all hot air or a real man of action. Mark the 11th of November 2011 on your calendar and wait to see if he delivers.
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