On 11/09/2009 21:13, William Herrin wrote:
180kbps is more or less middle-of-the-road for ADSL.
In terms of technology, it's about as close to bottom of the range as you can get. The south african incumbent, Telkom, have three different products, described here: http://www.telkom.co.za/products_services/dsl/cost_dsl_cost.html I love the product names: their 128k/384k product is called "FastDSL". Their top-of-the-range, gold plated product is a 512k/4M trailblazer service called "FastestDSL". The irony of it all... There is hope for telecoms in ZA, though - there's been several major changes to the ZA telecoms scene over the last year. A court ruling in august last year effectively opened up the telecoms market so that any company could get a generic telecoms license (VANS - value-added network service). The court case was fought tooth and nail by the ministry of communications who seemed desperate to protect the telkom / neotel duopoly. This was possibly related to the fact that Telkom is 39.8% owned by the ZA government and is something of a money-spinner. But in a major step forward for the country, the high court in Jo'burg disagreed that licenses should be restricted and refused leave to appeal after the ruling. There are now ~600 VANS license holders in south africa, up from 2 last year. The second event was that the ZA minister of communications for the last 10 years, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, retired from her position as minister due to natural causes. As usual for controversial figures, there were different points of view expressed on her life's work. One - typically held by government and other official figures - praised her role in communications, saying that "with her incisive intellect she has made an invaluable contribution to the development of policy in various fields, including information and communication technology." Another point of view from the industry put things slightly differently:
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/patternrecognition/2009/04/07/ivy-matsepe-casab...
Last, but not least, the Seacom cable linking ZA to Marseille, Mumbai and a bunch of countries up the east coast of Africa - a cable which Matsepe-Casaburri did her best to prevent from landing in south africa - is nearing completion. This will take away Telkom's monopoly on international connectivity, which is the second major step after market liberalisation required to actually improve the industry's infrastructure. So, good news all around. Let's hope that IP over carrier pigeon will soon become a thing of the past. Nick