SEACOM's SMW4 cable woes continue

I though SEACOM fixed it so that they were no longer dependent on the SEA-ME-BREAK-AGAIN4 system? Whatever happened to that?
 
Seacom really needs to get it's act together, putting the blame off onto someone else doesn't change the reliability of the service you get via their cable.
 
Browser said:
Seacom really needs to get it's act together, putting the blame off onto someone else doesn't change the reliability of the service you get via their cable.
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Same could be said to the ISP's who use Seacom.
 
I ask any knowledgeable person who is reading this, with tears in my eyes... Do we not have another cable running up the eastern side of Africa, known as EASSy??????? Has this cable not been operational for the last 5 to 6 months? Are they not boasting 100% reliability of this cable on the EASSy website? If your answers to these three questions are all yes, then please, answer me this... Who is using this cable????? Because it seems as though any person with an MWEB/Axxess/Internet Solutions/Openweb/Whatever internet account is stuck between this Seacom rubbish and the old SAT-3 cable when it's needed for redundancy purposes (MWEB customers obviously)... Can anyone who actually knows the answer to my last question please answer it for me? Please? I'm running out of tears and I'm beginning to bleed out of my ears here...
 
JustBlack said:
I ask any knowledgeable person who is reading this, with tears in my eyes... Do we not have another cable running up the eastern side of Africa, known as EASSy??????? Has this cable not been operational for the last 5 to 6 months? Are they not boasting 100% reliability of this cable on the EASSy website? If your answers to these three questions are all yes, then please, answer me this... Who is using this cable????? Because it seems as though any person with an MWEB/Axxess/Internet Solutions/Openweb/Whatever internet account is stuck between this Seacom rubbish and the old SAT-3 cable when it's needed for redundancy purposes (MWEB customers obviously)... Can anyone who actually knows the answer to my last question please answer it for me? Please? I'm running out of tears and I'm beginning to bleed out of my ears here...
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It has to do with cost.
 
JustBlack said:
Ok fantastic... Everything has to do with cost... My question was... WHO is using this cable? That's the only answer I'm looking for...
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Pretty much everybody except WebAfrica.

Most ISPs use a mix of Seacom & SAT3. The mix of the two determines the damage done. e.g. Vodacom uses Seacom, but they've got enough SAT3 so that it doesn't really affect them too much. Afrihost etc are heavy on Seacom b/w and consequently get hit hard.

The premium products e.g. OpenWeb Gold rely on Seacom heavily, but have SAT3 fallback. They should not suffer too heavily.
 
MickeyD said:
Vodacom, Telkom, MTN, Neotel.
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I would also like to know the answer to JustBlack's question, with some detail, and why the EASSy cable doesn't seem to be being used much at all by the ISPs. Though does this give a clue?

http://www.jsltimes.com/eassy-cable-open-business

"Investors include MTN, Neotel, Telkom, Vodacom" ... basically the profiteering cartel group offering 'mobile' pricing are the main investors (and yes, I include Telkom, with their 8ta and lack of interest in DSL services) ... these specifically don't WANT the ISPs to be able to charge even less for bandwidth, thereby competing further with (and embarrassing more) their insanely high bundle data prices, so is it possible they are purposely pricing services too high for the ISPs in order to keep them from taking advantage of this cable? Anyone have any more actual info or references? Maybe they've calculated that they can perversely get more profit in SA with less business on that cable, for the time being (I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect so, because, though you wouldn't think it, the cost of installing such a cable is actually peanuts compared to the profits of Vodacom, MTN etc. at their profit margins ... offering cheap bandwidth to the ISPs would cannibalize their mobile data business, and it's just simple math: If the amount of canniablized mobile data business would be larger than the revenue from the cable minus maintenance costs, then it's more profitable to literally sit on the cable and do nothing ... it's also not a market where there's any advantage to 'building a user base' - backend suppliers are relatively easy to change once competition arrives later). I guess then that Cell C must mainly use the old cables, which may be why they can (and are willing) to offer bandwidth a bit cheaper.

If I'm right, then it's thus not very promising that we see basically the same list of profiteers on the WACS investor list (would also explain why we don't hear any WACS promotion even though it was supposedly scheduled to be finished this year). WACS thus may also not bring prices down (unless Cell C manages to have some effect ... they look like the only potential wild card here .. vote with your wallets folks).
 
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HavocXphere said:
Pretty much everybody except WebAfrica.

Most ISPs use a mix of Seacom & SAT3. The mix of the two determines the damage done. e.g. Vodacom uses Seacom, but they've got enough SAT3 so that it doesn't really affect them too much. Afrihost etc are heavy on Seacom b/w and consequently get hit hard.

The premium products e.g. OpenWeb Gold rely on Seacom heavily, but have SAT3 fallback. They should not suffer too heavily.
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I was referring to the EASSy cable... Not Seacom...
 
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