Local Loop Unbundling at fair prices is essential to bring about true competition.

More competition on submarine cables is also required – moving from monopoly to duopoly to an oligopoly or cartel only creates the perception of competition. The answers lie in what has been done overseas – adopting the good and the learning from the bad.

With hindsight, the disastrous privatisation of Telkom, the recent reports in the media of hints of skullduggery involving mobile interconnect rates, the probable future boom-bust nature of building bandwidth, I’d be very scared to invest money in SA telecoms in the medium or long term. (Unless I know who the controlling players are, from the politicians to the corporate financial brokers) However, corruption at this level is not confined to Africa, it happens in the most advanced economies, just it’s very sophisticated.

So how does one build a cheaper network? Perhaps I’m missing the point here but in an enterprise-class or Telecom-level network It’s not as simplistic as just the cheap deployment of fiber. There’s much, much more complexity involved, to make it reliable and functional. This any telco engineer or executive will tell you.To initiate it is not quite as cheap as you’d think. That’s not to say it can’t be cheaper it can , just to be realistic about the costs and investment required.

plus you prices then was relatively high to prices know (according to his calculations), the thign is it was a NEW technology then, today its fairy matured..

weak article, and please give me a link to the 19c/megabyte ( its probably only a package that is like 200gigabytes cap or something) . What about the average consumer?

Why is it that mobile operators have kept up with and even exceeded international standards in mobile broadband, but Telkom fixed-line speeds have remained largely static practically since introduction? Cost is not the sole issue here, performance must be looked at as well, and it’s certainly nowhere near national standards. Is it the fiber (or lack of it) that’s the problem here? Really?

What about all that dark fiber Broadband Infraco suddenly, interestingly, finds itself sitting on for zero investment, the entire unlit large-capacity network which used to belong to Transnet, was promised to Neotel then somehow suddenly got yanked away and dumped into yet another useless, profiteering “new” shell? There was spending on infrastructure, but rather than this being sold off at a cheap rate to private investors when the company collapsed, it got redirected into another Telkom profiteering machine and sidelined until demand was so pent-up that it could come in and charge an insignificant amount less than the hated incumbent and just absorb a huge amount of pent-up demand as sheer, unearned revenue.

Still nice, thought provoking article well researched and written.

Another thing: Telkom recently stated that the cost of international bandwidth only makes up 30% of the cost of providing the bandwidth. If this is true, then why is international bandwidth 10x more expensive than local bandwidth? It should only cost 30% more than local bandwidth.

South Africa is being raped with international bandwidth costs – and yes, we can carry on paying for “infrastructure” (or fat bonuses) but it’s going to leave SA in the dark with regards to online business advancement.

As for cost: who can really say what the real price of bandwidth in South Africa should be? What is pretty clear is that government intervention and inaction, which often happened at the same time, has only helped to increase prices.

More bandwidth is also not going to help the foggy regulatory environment. Who would want to invest millions in infrastructure only to find out tomorrow that it is illegal? Getting rid of the antiquated legislation won’t fix things, but at least it will make room for someone who has an interest in doing better bandwidth.

Fortunately the signs from the new DoC are encouraging. But right now we need more than signs – we need vision and clarity.