Power ON

I was driving home the other night and noticed that all our street lights were out. At first I thought the power must be out, but then noticed that the houses on the street had electricity. So the next morning I talked to our guard and inquired how long the street lights were out. According to him, they were out for as long as he could remember. Now, I'm assuming that this is a electricity conservation method used by the local city council, which, if it is quite foolish. Dark streets provide a wonderful opportunity for crime, anywhere in the world.

So I got to thinking. SA has a electricity issue, in that there is not enough to go around. Hence the rolling black/brown outs, aka load shedding. The 40,000 megawatts currently being generated by the coal and nuclear plants is just not cutting it for this fast developing country. I've read that Eskom is building another power plant, at the cost of R30 billion in Limpopo. However, this is a coal powered plant. Since coal is not a renewable resource, in a couple years we're going to be back were we started- not enough power to go around. So what are the alternatives?

Lets start with the issue that got this thought process going. The street lights being out can be solved by solar powered street lights. A Canadian company called Hybridyne Power Systems has developed a technology where the lights can be powered by the sun (via a solar panel on top) or by the wind (via a vertical wind turbine). Furthermore, the lights can be placed anywhere, as there is no need to dig up the street to lay cable to power them.

Also,instead of spending billions on fossil fuel based plants, how about wind power or wave powered plants? SA has some amazing waves, just ask the surfers in Durban. I've heard of wave powered plants popping up in Europe, (see Ocean Power Delivery in Scotland) and a while back I read that there was a test project proposed for Mossel Bay, which is a step in the right direction.

South Africa is an amazing country and it would be wonderful to see this nation at the forefront of alternative power technologies.

Full Throttle, uh NO!!!

There are many aspects of life in SA that I love, but there is one aspect that has been getting under my skin since I got here. That's the crippling hold that Telkom has on the communications infrastructure in South Africa, specifically the access to the internet.

Now, I understand that there are a number of countries in the world that have bandwidth caps. Hey, even Comcast in the US has started to cap users bandwidth. But bandwidth capping in South Africa has reached a new low. The ISP's here not only cap the bandwidth, but they also cap the pipe that you have access to; either 384 kbps, 512 kbps or 1MB+. Oh, and the pipe has to be setup through Telkom and then you can go ahead and choose the ISP of your choice. And if that is not absurd enough, how about the local vs international surfing. WTF, this is not an phone call, its the Internet. What happens if a 'local' site has video or audio content that resides on an 'international' server?

Then there's the price of access. A 384 kbps line will set you back R150 and a 3GB cap will cost you around R300, thats R450 p/m. If you want a faster line and more bandwidth the price begins to baloon, up to an insane R1249 p/m for an uncapped (12GB) account and 4MBps line. Thats $150 per month, and just as a reference point, an uncapped account in Canada is $30 per month.

What does a 384 line and 3GB per month allow you to do on the Net? Basically check your email and surf the web. However, the surfing experience is crippled, a content rich site, that utilizes AJAX, Flash or Silverlight will easily eat up 10-20MB of bandwidth. Yeah, and don't even think about downloading (legally of course) music, TV shows or videos.

Being a Digital Media professional, what I find really troubling about this restriction to the net is that there is a convergence of television and the internet that is occurring around the world. For example look at the Microsoft Media center, Apple TV or even the gaming consoles that can be set up to access the internet. This technology however, will not be utilized to its full capacity in SA, due to the current bandwidth restrictions. And even more disturbing is that access to information and communication is restricted by the Telkom monopoly and the size of your wallet.

In the mean time, I'll keep waiting for that second undersea cable to be placed down the east coast of Africa and the rise of NeoTel.