Comments on: SA’s broadband Wild West

By: Torch

Torch — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:57:16 +0000

Delightful satire… getting the head of iBurst, a company with a reputation for cowboy tactics, gouging, poor service, low speeds to write an article on all the areas where he has the most expertise … very good…

By: Sanko

Sanko — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:00:46 +0000

Shame Jannie, you run a company with terrible support, slow speeds, expensive bandwidth prices and a VERY aged technology. I’d have switched to WiMAX or even LTE many moons ago. I’d be poeping my best dual pipe jean pant if I were you my friend!

ADSL service or not, iBurst is a waste of time, especially seeing as the cell networks will be dropping their prices before the all-consuming soccer spectacular

By: Cephix

Cephix — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:53:00 +0000

I agree with the local loop unbundling issues.
The rest is absolute hogwash.

I have been with Afrihost for a considerable no time and seen no degradation of service.
With MWEB’s new uncapped offers the argument that it is a wild west scenario with only smaller ISP’s doing the cut price dance also becomes invalid.
MWEB is by no means a small player in the market.

Having a fixed line connection is exceptionally cheap, not expensive when compared to any wireless offering in the market.

This sounds like delusional self justification to keep prices high by some.
It will lead to their downfall as consumers will vote with their wallets.

By: Hero alifo

Hero alifo — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:37:28 +0000

Ok i hate the fact that u didnt get to the point. U kept refering to somewhat irrelavent wild wild west scenarios.

By: Iburst are ugly!

Iburst are ugly! — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:21:16 +0000

Hahha How appropriate the CEO for Ibusrt should write an article like this when there are many customers in their own firing line. They are killing. Maybe he should fix hi issues at home (iburst) before telling us how we are bring killed by all the ISP!

By: Shane

Shane — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Im also using Afrihost and getting some of the best speeds i ever seen! far far better than when i was using Telkom as my ISP. and i love their buy one get one free!

By: Tommygun

Tommygun — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:05:45 +0000

The byline of the article is

Icasa must enforce open access on wireless networks,

and it sounds great but what are you actually saying it means? Should I as a wisp be able to get wholsale rates on bandwidth via iBurst? Somthing else?

By: René

René — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:36:37 +0000

Anonymous Coward I agree with you as I also have Afrihost as my ISP and I can only praise them and my service is excellent… I have been using them for quite sometime now and they have really been fantastic. I wish we can get rid of the Telkom monopoly though for our lines as they are the ones that is keeping the speed from us with their astronomical line rentals… 10/10 for Afrihost and their Team in the ADSL field. Hope they will go from strength to strength and be able to reduce it even more for us…

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:14:45 +0000

@Nick R600 for 3gigs?! Are you comparing ZA 3G rates to Oz ADSL rates or something?

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:17:22 +0000

I’m with Altech Autopage and paying around R600 for 3Gigs per month. I was in Australia a few weeks ago and saw that they’re offering 120Gigs for $49, roughly R350. By my calculations I’m paying 80X more than the Australians…

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:25:46 +0000

Well written piece, but it seems to be mainly in defense of the big guys. The SA broadband consumer, particularly those in the DSL space are used to paying high prices for access. We have made peace (to some extent) with it. The problem is that we keep hearing about new cables arriving, Seacom, EASY, and the raft of others coming in. But, we aren’t seeing bandwidth costs dropping.

The only guys coming in with low prices are the small “cowboys.” So naturally, they are attractive. I would like to see a detailed explanation of why the bug guys (Axxess, MWEB, iBurst) have not passed on the savings they are undoubtedly making to the end consumer.

I believe that the simple explanation is that they like profit, the more the better. And they’ll hold out as long as they can. It is too easy to blame high prices on the past and Telkom’s undeniable c*ckups. If international broadband access prices have dropped, then we should be paying less. end of story.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:05:23 +0000

Sorry, but I don’t buy the ugly part for a moment. I’m using AfriHost and yet have to see any serious degradation of my connection speed.

Business 101 – make things cheaper and sell more of it in order to make a better profit. – NOT making/keeping things more expensive…