An archive of the South African PCFormat forums.
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Well yeah if you sit with like a 8Gb cap like me cuz you are permanently connected to some kind of VPN and working through remote desktops. That 20% makes a big diff to your budget.WiK1d wrote:Yeah, R299 to R239 is a HUGE drop.
So what they going to call their wifi-hotspots? G-SpotDarkStar wrote:G-Connect:
MyBB wrote:SEACOM reveals bandwidth utilization
During the recent MyBroadband conference Suveer Ramdhani from SEACOM described their business strategy by saying: “It’s quite simple – we took 600-million dollars, threw it in the ocean, and said ‘we need this money back in five years.’ Whatever comes after that is profit. We expected higher market share, but it didn’t quite come through that way.”
Ramdhani revealed that of the full SEACOM design capacity of 1.28Tbps, ten wavelengths have been lit, supplying 100Gbps of bandwidth.
A common complaint is that the anticipated price decreases brought about by the arrival of SEACOM have to a large extent not been realised. There have also been complaints that SEACOM bandwidth has been slow to filter through to consumers.
Ramdhani attributes this to the bottleneck issues surrounding national backhaul systems. “The limiting factor is backhaul. There are those on the consumer side that want bandwidth, and there is us on the undersea side that want to give it – we just can’t seem to connect.”
“It’s kind of disappointing. We don’t have direct control over the retail market. I think everyone wanted to let SEACOM prove itself in the market – nobody wanted to make the first move. After a few months we saw [price] reductions in the market.” Ramdhani said that these reductions have generally not come from Tier 1 SEACOM clients, but from those who have bought from their Tier 1 clients.
“The people who are willing to reduce prices in the market don’t necessarily have their own access network. It really comes down to our channels to the market. The big boys that have [direct] access to customers, and have access to the national [backhaul], need to start dropping their prices as well,” he explained.
“Whilst there is some competition in the national leg, with [Broadband] Infraco and Neotel coming online, there’s a lot of capital being pumped in only [recently], and the price reductions that come with that national backhaul will only [emerge] a few years later,” said Ramdhani.
“The other major point is the access network,” he continued. “Even if you do solve national backhaul bottlenecks, how do you actually get to the consumer in his house or office? Local loop unbundling is still many years away.”
“These issues need to be addressed before consumers really begin to see the benefits of the cable initiatives,” said Ramdhani.
Undersea competition
The operator consortium of Telkom, Vodacom, Broadband Infraco, Neotel and MTN are in the process of implementing their own undersea cable, the West African Cable System (WACS) with a design capacity of over 5Tbps. They made their agreement official on 8 April 2009, just as SEACOM was nearing the Durban coast.
The consortium members will own and have direct access to a large amount of bandwidth over the cable, and hopefully this will spark aggressive pricing competition in the market. Ramdhani discussed the impact this may have on SEACOMs business.
“We are concerned that the operators have chosen to do this. SEACOM being a private open access initiative, it really encourages as many operators [as possible] to purchase from us and access our [points-of-presence]. With operators building their own systems and bringing their own capacity directly to the market, it leaves us with fewer channels to which to market,” said Ramdhani.
Apart from SEACOM and WACS, there is the established undersea cable system SAT-3/SAFE and EASSy – set to arrive in 2010 – which will serve the international bandwidth needs of local companies.
so what about the mad price slashing going on at the moment, because unless I missed it, I don't see mention in the article. he talks about the future.Stuart wrote:MyBB wrote:SEACOM reveals bandwidth utilization
During the recent MyBroadband conference Suveer Ramdhani from SEACOM described their business strategy by saying: “It’s quite simple – we took 600-million dollars, threw it in the ocean, and said ‘we need this money back in five years.’ Whatever comes after that is profit. We expected higher market share, but it didn’t quite come through that way.”
Ramdhani revealed that of the full SEACOM design capacity of 1.28Tbps, ten wavelengths have been lit, supplying 100Gbps of bandwidth.
A common complaint is that the anticipated price decreases brought about by the arrival of SEACOM have to a large extent not been realised. There have also been complaints that SEACOM bandwidth has been slow to filter through to consumers.
Ramdhani attributes this to the bottleneck issues surrounding national backhaul systems. “The limiting factor is backhaul. There are those on the consumer side that want bandwidth, and there is us on the undersea side that want to give it – we just can’t seem to connect.”
“It’s kind of disappointing. We don’t have direct control over the retail market. I think everyone wanted to let SEACOM prove itself in the market – nobody wanted to make the first move. After a few months we saw [price] reductions in the market.” Ramdhani said that these reductions have generally not come from Tier 1 SEACOM clients, but from those who have bought from their Tier 1 clients.
“The people who are willing to reduce prices in the market don’t necessarily have their own access network. It really comes down to our channels to the market. The big boys that have [direct] access to customers, and have access to the national [backhaul], need to start dropping their prices as well,” he explained.
“Whilst there is some competition in the national leg, with [Broadband] Infraco and Neotel coming online, there’s a lot of capital being pumped in only [recently], and the price reductions that come with that national backhaul will only [emerge] a few years later,” said Ramdhani.
“The other major point is the access network,” he continued. “Even if you do solve national backhaul bottlenecks, how do you actually get to the consumer in his house or office? Local loop unbundling is still many years away.”
“These issues need to be addressed before consumers really begin to see the benefits of the cable initiatives,” said Ramdhani.
Undersea competition
The operator consortium of Telkom, Vodacom, Broadband Infraco, Neotel and MTN are in the process of implementing their own undersea cable, the West African Cable System (WACS) with a design capacity of over 5Tbps. They made their agreement official on 8 April 2009, just as SEACOM was nearing the Durban coast.
The consortium members will own and have direct access to a large amount of bandwidth over the cable, and hopefully this will spark aggressive pricing competition in the market. Ramdhani discussed the impact this may have on SEACOMs business.
“We are concerned that the operators have chosen to do this. SEACOM being a private open access initiative, it really encourages as many operators [as possible] to purchase from us and access our [points-of-presence]. With operators building their own systems and bringing their own capacity directly to the market, it leaves us with fewer channels to which to market,” said Ramdhani.
Apart from SEACOM and WACS, there is the established undersea cable system SAT-3/SAFE and EASSy – set to arrive in 2010 – which will serve the international bandwidth needs of local companies.
Yep, Mweb is on Seacom, WA is not.WiK1d wrote:What are the MWeb uncapped options based on? Mine has been very slow this morning, so I switched over the my backup WA account and it's flying.
Indeed. That's why it's SLOW instead of completely DEAD. From MyBB . . .KillerByte wrote:MWEB are on SEACOM but have redundant backup on the SAT-3 cable system.
Mweb Ops wrote:We’ve been notified by Seacom that due to adverse weather conditions the repairs to the undersea cable are going to take longer than originally expected. The work will only be completed some time tomorrow (27th of April). Our alternative international bandwidth is quite congested so we are shaping heavily on things like peer-to-peer. Thank you for your continued patience.
Regards
MWEB Ops
For the sake of testing if shaping is in place, any suggestions as to where should I download anime from?Anthro wrote:We use torrents to see if shaping is in place..
Well, at this present moment I am trying to complete one of my anime series, missing a few episodes.
And it's crawling.. so I am impatient
Repeatedly?KALSTER wrote:The question is: How and WHY did it fail?
Yeah. Is it design related? Bad luck? Substandard materials? Substandard engineering practices? Essentially: Who do we string up?Stuart wrote:Repeatedly?KALSTER wrote:The question is: How and WHY did it fail?