Minister says no international fibre for us
Well almost, she said "no undersea cables will be allowed to land in SA unless they are majority owned by local investors" see mybroadband for the full article.
Some have commented "Calling for major SA ownership will in several camps be interpreted as calling for final business control and looked upon as a big risk by many investors, operators & most parties outside SA" another said "You would have to look to George Orwell to find a higher level of irony in bureaucrat-speak." One person made the considered response, "I have seen so many bad decisions made in the name of African development and until we Africans with the technical expertise align our selves with the decision maker I think we will continue to see the same bad decisions made over and over again."
But basically we're heading for a new era. The information age is coming to South Africa! Government is selling their shares in Telkom which means good things. For example, it seems like by the end of next year we'll have over a dozen Telco's. Yay! Finally we will have affordable broadband. Good Luck!
Some have commented "Calling for major SA ownership will in several camps be interpreted as calling for final business control and looked upon as a big risk by many investors, operators & most parties outside SA" another said "You would have to look to George Orwell to find a higher level of irony in bureaucrat-speak." One person made the considered response, "I have seen so many bad decisions made in the name of African development and until we Africans with the technical expertise align our selves with the decision maker I think we will continue to see the same bad decisions made over and over again."
But basically we're heading for a new era. The information age is coming to South Africa! Government is selling their shares in Telkom which means good things. For example, it seems like by the end of next year we'll have over a dozen Telco's. Yay! Finally we will have affordable broadband. Good Luck!
Labels: South Africa, telecoms
posted by Alan Levin at 8:39 am
2 Comments:
As much as protectionism is common in development country, I am not sure this is the right policy for a developing country.
There are statistic (last one was shown to me by Intel) that shows strong co-relation between GDP and broadband penetration. Increase broadband penetration have a huge economic benefit to the country, be it increase in productivity, education or opportunity.
And there is a direct co-relation between broadband penetration and international access pricing. By not opening up international fiber, SA is hurting itself more than it thinks.
My word, this can only come from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet survives through peering.
South Africa having enough content to encourage overseas carriers to land fibre here - thus affording us greater bandwidth is a very good thing, the fact that we don't at the moment is one problem but to blatantly state that we will deny people this access is a mistake of somewhat epic proportions.
Thank goodness my passport is safely tucked away close to me...
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