Broadband prices need to be halved – Knott-Craig

Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig says the cost of accessing the Internet in SA needs to be cut in half. By Duncan McLeod.

Added by Duncan McLeod on 19 April 2012.
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Alan Knott-Craig

New Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig has told the department of communications’ policy colloquium in Midrand, which is taking place on Thursday and Friday this week, that the cost of accessing the Internet in SA needs to be cut in half.

He lamented the telecommunications industry’s “failure” to offer the “best broadband in terms of quality, speed and price”.

“In the early 1970s, SA was rated number five in the world [in telecoms] or certainly in the top 10. We were certainly number one in Africa [but] we are now 73rd in the world and going backward. And we are no longer number one in Africa.”

Knott-Craig told the colloquium that he thinks broadband prices in SA should be half of what they are today – despite the fact that he believes SA’s telecoms prices are “good”.

“Our world in 2030 will be a data world where data is the medium for everything,” he said. “Will voice have completely disappeared? We’ll have to wait and see [but] cost, speed and quality of data will be critical.”

Knott-Craig said the industry will have to collaborate with government if costs are to be lowered and quality improved. This will include avoiding duplication of infrastructure in rural areas and reducing cost structures in the industry, which he says are “way too high”.

“We need to allocate resources in a way that drives costs down [and] encourages and enhances competition in a way that actually results in competition and leads to lower prices.”

Joking, Knott-Craig said he was a “newcomer to the industry”.

“I have been away from the industry for a while,” he said. “I got back to the industry and found not much had changed.”

He said operators needed to admit that the “race for market” share was “done”.

“We are in a different stage of our lives. We have to drive costs down and accept that data is the way forward and that speed, price and quality is what will make it happen for us — or not.”  — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media

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  • http://www.etiennek.com/ Etienne Koekemoer

    Here’s to the N900 – the last great phone from Nokia.

  • Mark Strathmore

    So nice to read a solid, balanced, and well considered article. Often this industry is commented on by people who wield large pens with small insights.

  • Teklemon

    The N9 is a beauty. What it lacks is as you mentioned the app-eco system around the Meego platform.And that short-coming is already making me feel like I made a mistake by going for N9, i think the Symbian app system is better placed than Meegos. That shows us how important is the ecosystem around the OS , just like the OS itself.
    I dont doubt for a moment that Mr Elop made the right decision to go with MS rather than Google. But not sure he executed it in the right way. Announcing death of symbian, death of Meego were not required but could have done once the Windows phones had gained the trust of the consumers by itself rather than by the death of other Nokia platforms. That resulted in lot of bad PR and loss f trust in the future for its products.
    Windows 8 will be a game changer. The huge challenge is the distribution capacity of Nokia to spread the devices as fast as possible rather than focussed lanches in specific markets. That will not help.
    Samsung has been successful to catch marketshare with useless hw specs like quad-core etc that makes no perceivable difference with a previous models, but Nokia can take a lesson from them in creating some hype around hw.
    Nokia must also persue a multi OS srategy same as Samsung where by they can use Android for atleast a certain line of produscts (mid-low range).

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    >Announcing death of symbian, death of Meego were not required but could have done once the Windows phones had gained the trust of the consumers

    There was no 100% right way of doing it.  Should Elop have waited, there’d have been years of speculation what Nokia were going to do, and then when they phased out Symbian and Meego, they’d have earned the hatred of those communities that would have been strung along.  Best to be honest about it upfront, he unloaded all those jobs onto Accenture and shed the rest ASAP, saving Nokia billions of dollars.  Never nice to retrench people, but keeping them on longer would just be delaying the inevitable.

    It’s really nice to see that Nokia can’t make Lumia 900′s fast enough to keep up with demand, and there’s quite a few Windows Phone 7 developers making a living solely off the platform now, showing that as a 3rd ecosystem, it’s becoming a player quickly.  I’m sure that it’ll drive iOS6 to get some kind of live tiles, and maybe give Google a wake-up call to sort their Android updates out.  Which is all we really want right now - an upstart OS to drive the stagnating mobile OS field.

  • Teklemon

     thanks for that insight Greg. But some experts say (and I believe the same) that there was a better way of handling the massive shift of OS strategy.
    1. Announce Windows as a partner for Lumia line of devices.
    2. Continue development of Symbian, Meego for couple of years, merge the two (both are Qt based) and announce Symbian will be stopped and Meego will exist (or vice versa). Whoever was in the obsolete OS, will have the option to port to the other with all apps having the same portability (easy, as both could have used Qt)
    3. Step 2 could have avoided the image of Symbian as a walking ghost and protected its market and avoided the massive revenue leak that they faced even in strongholds like India and China on symbian sales.
    4. After initial success of Windows phone line and after having a comprehensive device portfolio (not just 1-2 models in 1-2 countries) Nokia could announce Symbian/meego (whichever was existing) would be phased out gradually. I believe this should have happened in say 2014. (Now see Mr Elop saying about re-invigorating s40 series in China/India..thats backtracking..)
    5. I am of the firm opinion that Symbian could have easily compteted against Android (Try the Belle release,if you doubt) if Nokia had not labelled it as “ancient”. Just a  marketing tweak of  creativly naming the new version and by endorsing app developers and by sustaining the portability aspects between old and new Symbians, the war horse could have had many of years of life in it and defended a lion’s share of its market.

    I really hope the business schools in future will not teach their students “Elop effect” wrt how a great compay can be destroyed by poorly timed strategic communication (though the strategy was correct).

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    I’m not so sure the target market for the Symbian devices is really aware or cares about what Elop has said about Windows Phone 7.   Elop’s communication aimed at the tech press and the top few percent of techie smartphone users, not some bricklayer in India that needs a cheap smartphone.

    At some point, all products lose their charm.  It was just Symbian’s time.  At some point, iOS will suffer the same fate, as will Android.

    >>Now see Mr Elop saying about re-invigorating s40 series in China/India..thats backtracking.

    Not at all.  Nokia are calling Symbian their “next billion” platform, ie. they expect to sell a billion of them before it fades.   They still take Symbian seriously and know they need it.

  • Teklemon

     Actually the market cares. The competitor will make sure about that. What else can account for the eroding feature phone market share?
    What is the point in putting more attention to grow something that you are going to kill anyway, unless it is a lamb or a turkey?
    I think Elop was pushed by MS to get maximum mileage out of the association and he fell for it.
    Its not only about losing charm over a period, i would say that Nokia was so complacent with Symbian and how wuickly they caught up(atleast in GUI) with Android once they had competition. Wouldnt hav happened if they had something similar to Belle in 2009.

  • http://twitter.com/nowires Lars P. Reichelt

    @Duncan, your last sentence should be a question and read: Is it wrong to assume the company jumped off a burning platform only to drown in the cold Baltic sea?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steven-Zahl/1670371040 Steven Zahl

    NOKIA is TOAST

  • http://twitter.com/miracules Morten Engvoldsen

    Neither Symbian nor MeeGo are based on Qt. The Qt API is ported to support the two platforms.

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