A decade of SA broadband speeds

For a third world country with most of the population in complete poverty, the broadband growth has been tremendous and I'm very excited.

Not too long ago, I remember being insanely jealous when a friend got a 1Mb line installed when I was still on 384k. 1Mb seemed insanely fast back then, and this was just a couple of years ago. Now I'm currently awaiting installation of a 40Mb line.
 
SplaT said:
For a third world country with most of the population in complete poverty, the broadband growth has been tremendous and I'm very excited.

Not too long ago, I remember being insanely jealous when a friend got a 1Mb line installed when I was still on 384k. 1Mb seemed insanely fast back then, and this was just a couple of years ago. Now I'm currently awaiting installation of a 40Mb line.
Click to expand...

Actually seems to be going backwards in a lot of places as Telkom isn't installing or replacing lines. My dad had adsl for years then speeds dropped and eventually gone. Now he can't get anything, I had to wait almost four years for my instalation and it's still limited to 2 meg so selected areas are lucky but most can't even get service
 
Sure, 100MB might be available but only to a very small specific part of the country. I would say that the highest that most people would be able to get sits between 4-20MB still.
 
Rapid development recently though the latest speeds are not representative of a significant population of SA internet consumers
 
whatwhat said:
Sure, 100MB might be available but only to a very small specific part of the country. I would say that the highest that most people would be able to get sits between 4-20MB still.
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I'd say that average is less than 4mbps. The speeds in excess of 4mbps is available to a minority. I'd also stick my neck out and say that the number who will benefit from the higher speeds will diminish. As unemployment and poverty increases, and Telkom refrains from replacing stolen networks, less will benefit from fixed line achievements. And so the only way forward will be mobile.

jannievanzyl said:
Something wrong somewhere when mobile tracks ahead of fixed.
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Totally agree.
 
In my opinion Mobile service have an advantage over fixed line alternatives.

  • It is easy to set up and you can use it everywhere.
  • There isn’t a limitation on the number of users who can connect due to port availability.
  • It provides the user with the highest speed that is available in an area because it is not linked to the package you have.
  • Faults are fixed quickly because it affects a large number of users.
  • You only pay for the data you use because there are no line rentals.
 
Another useless bull**** graph

only 10% at most can actually get anything faster than 4mbps.
 
September 2006 – Telkom launches 4Mbps ADSL
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So for around 8 years broadband speed increases in my area has stood still.
 
Sneeky said:
So for around 8 years broadband speed increases in my area has stood still.
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Yup same problem in my area and apparently it won't get better as people need to place more orders for adsl for them to even consider upgrading. But people don't place orders as it takes to long for adsl to be installed.
My brother in the UK 8 years ago had 16megs now sitting on 120 megs for the same price. I am still sitting on 2 meg cause my exchange won't sync at 4.
 
Lupus said:
My brother in the UK 8 years ago had 16megs now sitting on 120 megs for the same price. I am still sitting on 2 meg cause my exchange won't sync at 4.
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My Dad, now aged in his mid-90's, and living in England has a 16 Mbps BT Internet connection. All he does with it is check his Gmail, and perhaps looks at an occasional website.

And here I am, in my mid-60s, and living in a small WC town, with a Telkom 4Mbps connection (the max our exchange supports), with seemingly no hope of getting a higher speed connection
 
atomcrusher said:
My Dad, now aged in his mid-90's, and living in England has a 16 Mbps BT Internet connection. All he does with it is check his Gmail, and perhaps looks at an occasional website.

And here I am, in my mid-60s, and living in a small WC town, with a Telkom 4Mbps connection (the max our exchange supports), with seemingly no hope of getting a higher speed connection
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Yeah my dad had a 1 meg connection here for many years it went dead now he can't even get a line again sigh. This mentality gets to me sometimes :(
 
whatwhat said:
Nothing wrong with it in a country like South Africa, people here have more mobile phones than fixed lines.
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Quantities have very little to do with it IMO.

If telkom had any sort of decent residential access infrastructure, most people would have the option of 20/2mbps ADSL at reasonable prices.

Telkom are waaay behind the curve, and SA's cell carriers are just about keeping up with EU/US standards on their infrastructure. There is at least 1 obvious reason for that.
 
fealty said:
Quantities have very little to do with it IMO.

If telkom had any sort of decent residential access infrastructure, most people would have the option of 20/2mbps ADSL at reasonable prices.
Click to expand...

Quantity is what it is about. Look how big SA is, and how expensive it is to put infrastructure in place (the strikes, the unions, the long time it gets anything done due to SA work ethic). Then there is the ever decreasing fixed lined subscribers as well for which mobile data is enough.

What works in a highly populated area like Singapore or the UK will not work here, and high speed fixed line will be limited to a very select few areas for a long time.
 
whatwhat said:
Quantity is what it is about. Look how big SA is, and how expensive it is to put infrastructure in place (the strikes, the unions, the long time it gets anything done due to SA work ethic). Then there is the ever decreasing fixed lined subscribers as well for which mobile data is enough.

What works in a highly populated area like Singapore or the UK will not work here, and high speed fixed line will be limited to a very select few areas for a long time.
Click to expand...

Doesn't explain then why the US, Canada and Australia are so cheap and have access to high speed broadband in so many areas. These countries are far bigger than SA.
 
LaraC said:
In my opinion Mobile service have an advantage over fixed line alternatives.

  • It is easy to set up and you can use it everywhere.
  • There isn’t a limitation on the number of users who can connect due to port availability.
  • It provides the user with the highest speed that is available in an area because it is not linked to the package you have.
  • Faults are fixed quickly because it affects a large number of users.
  • You only pay for the data you use because there are no line rentals.
Click to expand...

Wireless is way too expensive though. Also completely unreliable. Soon as a few people connect to your tower you speeds go to ****.

Wired is more stable, with a much cheaper per GB cost.
 
zippy said:
Doesn't explain then why the US, Canada and Australia are so cheap and have access to high speed broadband in so many areas. These countries are far bigger than SA.
Click to expand...
Competition is one of the reasons... why have no other companies invested in copper last mile?
 
Chevron said:
Wireless is way too expensive though. Also completely unreliable. Soon as a few people connect to your tower you speeds go to ****.

Wired is more stable, with a much cheaper per GB cost.
Click to expand...
It will only be more expensive if you use huge amounts of data. To have access to ADSL you’ll pay almost R400 and then you wouldn’t even have downloaded one megabyte of data. You can use that money to purchase additional data bundles.
 
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