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.
1 comments:
The folks down here are just happy to access the internet. For those who have been lucky to use internet overseas, it is clear what a rip-off telkom is but for the rest, ADSL is king. These are the very issues that I hope will fuel the rise of Neotel. Finally, you will continue to find that there is a lot that is 15yrs behind in this beautiful country . . .
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