Think Gbps, says DFA

SA is so far behind that we drool at the thought of uncapped 8Mbps. Truth is we need to wake up and catch up if we want to stay competitive. We need 50Mbps to 100Mbps as a standard.

Also, wireless is cheap and easy for the teleco providers, but it screws the customers with bad quality links and low speeds. We need to wake up and start demanding fiber, not copper or wireless.

The ONLY reason we don't have this is because the teleco providers are taking us for a ride and milking us for as much as they are worth.

Stop accepting the BS excuse of "you cannot compare first world countries with third world countries". After Seacom landed there will be sufficient international bandwidth to at least provide every internet user in the country with an uncapped account. As average speeds increase we will need more than just the Seacom cable, but for now it will be enough.

I am sick of the teleco companies bringing out excuses as to why they need to rip us off all the time.
 
well, at least one company IS thinking big and actually putting cable into the ground as we speak. That company is Dark Fibre Africa and apart from Seacom, may just be the company that saves us all in 2009.
 
ha ha, i still dont have an uncapped 20mb line in my house for R500 a month so i really am not interested cuz it's all talk until we actually get proper lines.
 
Getting the fibre installed takes time, but it has started, sure no one is promising FTTH (yet) however, once big business is linked, the logical step is FTTC, and then FTTH. We're moving forward; just not as fast as we'd all like.
 
This is all very nice and fluffy, but I seriously doubt that any company will in the near future lay a fibre cable to my home / curb. If you have a look around all the so-called competition to Telkom has only one option in order to try and establish a client base, and that option is unfortunately only wireless insternet.

So I wonder where we stand on LLU? Has Gov done anything to expediate / promote the rollout of LLU at all? Why do we not hear the "competion" screming from the rooftops for LLU? Surely it must be in evrybodies interest to have LLU implemented asap.
 
1M uncapped would be more than enough for me, heck 512K Uncapped would do just fine, i really don't mind waiting an extra 5mins for a youtube to cache (go make a cup of tea or something) or to download over night, but I do want to be unlimited on it.
 
I can guarantee you that if you live in Joburg, Pretoria, Cape Town or Durban, that you will start seeing Fibre to the Kerb/Cabinet, and even fibre to the home solutions in the next two years. It is the next natural evolution in the telecomms arena. It will happen first in areas where the cost to deployment ratio is high enough (dense enough) that they are guaranteed a return on investment. There are some suburbs which are dense enough to justify the laying of fibre.
 
eltherza said:
1M uncapped would be more than enough for me, heck 512K Uncapped would do just fine, i really don't mind waiting an extra 5mins for a youtube to cache (go make a cup of tea or something) or to download over night, but I do want to be unlimited on it.
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You sound like Bill Gates when he said that 640KB is enough ;)
 
One of the current projects involve infrastructure linking the Seacom landing station in Mtunzini with Durban, something which can bring more competition in the international bandwidth market.
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Since SEACOM has already announced that Neotel will provide the backhaul in South Africa (bundled into SEACOM's PoP-to-PoP pricing e.g. Jo'burg to London), surely this is just more marketing hype. Alternatively, DFA is positioning for the future (EASSy etc).
 
I know for a fact there is fiber laying just outside my area and along william nicole drive so its just a matter of waiting things out. I know we needed stuff like uncapped low latency fiber connections YEARS ago but i only think we will see stuff moving along in june/july this year with SEACOM kicking things off.
 
Garyvdh said:
well, at least one company IS thinking big and actually putting cable into the ground as we speak. That company is Dark Fibre Africa and apart from Seacom, may just be the company that saves us all in 2009.
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Until you see their pricing.
 
icyrus said:
Until you see their pricing.
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They can't afford to price themselves out of the market. Competition in South Africa is going to become nightmarish in the next few years with 300 to 500 IECNS licence holders all competing for a piece of the pie. It no longer pays to be greedy in South Africa. The market is open for more of these companies to start laying their own cable.. albeit in limited quantities, but they are going to be saying to current cable holders.. "you want to charge us what??? screw it, we are just going to lay our own cable!". That is the power of the IECNS competition.
 
Garyvdh said:
They can't afford to price themselves out of the market. Competition in South Africa is going to become nightmarish in the next few years with 300 to 500 IECNS licence holders all competing for a piece of the pie. It no longer pays to be greedy in South Africa. The market is open for more of these companies to start laying their own cable.. albeit in limited quantities, but they are going to be saying to current cable holders.. "you want to charge us what??? screw it, we are just going to lay our own cable!". That is the power of the IECNS competition.
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Well yeah, that is what they will say but in reality the funding is incredibly hard to come by.

DFA claim to be neutral but I am not convinced. Where did their funding come from and who are their major clients that are sustaining their development?

Neutrality requires transparency and I am not seeing this from DFA. I would love to be proven wrong though.
 
I agree with CalmD, The more fibre we have, the merrier. Lets be honest here, most of us are sitting here behind our desks reading this, "Promise for 20mb/s uncapped" story and most of us think its bull****. It may be bull****, and it may not be bull****. I think it's bull**** myself. South Africa is so far from having TRUE broadband, BUT times are changing, the technology of fibre has been around for a very long time and only recently has South Africa started to move into the fibre scene. Yes, we should have been on fibre long ago, but this country sucks wat more can I say. Truth be told, I believe we are on our way to having TRUE broadband in this country, it may take a couple of years to reach us, but we are moving forward. With all the new projects that have been in place for installing fibre cables, we are surely moving forward. Telkom have been trialling their 8mbit adsl for a while now, the reason they have not yet released it to the public is because they are in my opinion waiting for Seacom to launch its fibre optic cable, which will provide us with cheaper international bandwidth. Wats the point of having 8mbits if u only have a 3gb cap? So I believe that come June/July, Telkom will release their 8mbit service and who knows, maybe ADSL2+? Some of u may disagree with me and think that South Africa will NEVER have true broadband, thats fine, thats ur opinion. However, im more on the optimistic side, and i believe true broadband is on its way, whether it today, tomorrow, June/July or 5 years from now. Its coming and lets all be prepared!
 
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