Failed telecoms projects in SA
South Africa has had its fair share of failures in the telecommunications market, with Sentech a likely candidate for the ‘mother of all failures’ for its MyWireless and BizNet offerings.
What started off in 2004 as big plans to challenge Telkom’s ADSL offering with an uncapped MyWireless service ended in 2009 with Sentech discontinuing the service for the very few customers they had left at the time.
Sentech tried to put a positive spin on events, explaining that their broadband products “played an important enabling role in bringing multi-media to the South African market” but the millions in wasted taxpayers’ money and the parastatal’s poor performance in the broadband market will not easily be forgotten.
Sentech’s MyWireless’ failure was a high profile event, but many other projects have gone the same route without as much publicity. In November 2007 Vodacom launched Meep – a real-time, presence-based Instant Messaging service which was widely seen as an attempt to compete with MXit.
The exact date of Meep’s death was not communicated by the company, but it is believed that a complete lack of uptake ultimately caused Vodacom to pull the plug on this failed project.
In late 2007 MTN also launched its MXit competitor, NokNok, but like Meep, NokNok did not become as large a player in the IM market as MTN predicted. The service is however still available.
Vodacom’s entrance into the mobile gaming market with Legends of Echo – a location-based multiplayer game that allows players to trade, battle and communicate with other players across South Africa – has also not enjoyed rapid take-up.
The Legends of Echo website contains no ‘standings’ or ‘competitions’, and the official forum is overrun by spam giving a strong indication that there is no moderation and no real activity on the forum. This project may well go the same route as Meep.
The uncapped broadband market has also had its fair share of casualties.
The aforementioned MyWireless service is possibly the most famous one, but Screamer Telecoms, DigiChilli and Neotel have all burned their fingers by offering uncapped Internet access to subscribers.
And then there are the companies with huge promises which simply did not deliver. Goal Technology Solutions (GTS) is a good example.
GTS punted their plans to hook up every home this side of the Zambezi with Broadband over Powerline (BPL) connections, but this never transpired.
Do you know of any other failed projects? << Please tell us in the forum
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