As with much that happens in the media, people catch onto buzz words
and decide that they are our saviour against broadband issues in South
Africa. First it was PLCC which failed hopelessly many time over while
government after government wasted millions on proof of concept. Then
it was 3G which still has its place, but towers are hopelessly over
contented and each time I have to use it I feel like sawing my hands
off to end the pain.
Still the biggest wombat around has to be LLU. The concept is simple, you bully your previously state owned monopoly into opening the doors to their infrastructure to other providers. People stick some fibre into the exchange and ride on the rest of the PSTN.
It recently became apparent to me that the effect of LLU in SA will be nominal, if any at all. The reason for this is one of the major problems - our copper is old, and Telkom are doing nothing about it. They upgrade area exchanges on demand, if you're one poor sod with bad copper you're screwed and no amount of LLU is going to help you unless someone else starts laying copper (but more hopefully, fibre).
I recently discovered just how bad this is, in a very shocking way. I'm moving to Sandhurst, a place which Wikipedia snobbishly lists as "one of the wealthiest suburbs in South Africa". So you'd be forgiven for thinking that a modern and rich suburb right near Sandton would be abundant with every form of broadband available. I mean, if rich people aren't going to buy our expensive broadband then who is?
To my surprise, 3 weeks after logging a line migration request Telkom had "lost" the order due to migrating to a new ordering system. Ok great, so how about that ADSL then? Suddenly we were on a 2 month waiting list. Rather unacceptable since I work from home and had one week left to move, they had 3 weeks already to open their gob, and I happen to know that 2 weeks is their cut off point for acceptable install times. So what is the problem? It took an eventual escalation to Telkom corporate to get a solid and reliable answer of "we can't". Yes, somehow when Telkom run an exchange they don't bother with any sort of capacity planning, they just wait until it's completely full with no hope of provisioning anything more and then they start to order some new kit and cables - not the sort of kit you find at Incredible Connection either. The best answer I got from someone was "I'm not sure what date it's scheduled to be upgraded".
How is it possible for our largest telecomunications company to make such a hopeless blunder? How on earth, if our exchanges are running at very much maximum capacity, is LLU going to aid the situation when the buck still stops with the owner of that local loop? I remind you again, we're not talking about getting ADSL in Alexandrea (which is actualy possible), we're talking about somewhere which is a stones throw from the JSE. A place where many Telkom executives themselvs live. You can even leave asside ADSL, they are not provisioning voice either and their staff are hopeleslly clueless about WiMAX which (according to the hopeless staff) requires a 30 day wait.In the most simple terms, Telkom have told me to use 3G (no thanks) or to go to hell.
So I'm sorry FNB, WebAfrica, Internet Solutions and Nexus. I can't buy your bandwidth anymore even if I wanted to. And even if the local loop was unbundled, there simply isn't one to unbundle for me either. I can only imagine how many other exchanges are in a similar predicament, or very close to it.
Still the biggest wombat around has to be LLU. The concept is simple, you bully your previously state owned monopoly into opening the doors to their infrastructure to other providers. People stick some fibre into the exchange and ride on the rest of the PSTN.
It recently became apparent to me that the effect of LLU in SA will be nominal, if any at all. The reason for this is one of the major problems - our copper is old, and Telkom are doing nothing about it. They upgrade area exchanges on demand, if you're one poor sod with bad copper you're screwed and no amount of LLU is going to help you unless someone else starts laying copper (but more hopefully, fibre).
I recently discovered just how bad this is, in a very shocking way. I'm moving to Sandhurst, a place which Wikipedia snobbishly lists as "one of the wealthiest suburbs in South Africa". So you'd be forgiven for thinking that a modern and rich suburb right near Sandton would be abundant with every form of broadband available. I mean, if rich people aren't going to buy our expensive broadband then who is?
To my surprise, 3 weeks after logging a line migration request Telkom had "lost" the order due to migrating to a new ordering system. Ok great, so how about that ADSL then? Suddenly we were on a 2 month waiting list. Rather unacceptable since I work from home and had one week left to move, they had 3 weeks already to open their gob, and I happen to know that 2 weeks is their cut off point for acceptable install times. So what is the problem? It took an eventual escalation to Telkom corporate to get a solid and reliable answer of "we can't". Yes, somehow when Telkom run an exchange they don't bother with any sort of capacity planning, they just wait until it's completely full with no hope of provisioning anything more and then they start to order some new kit and cables - not the sort of kit you find at Incredible Connection either. The best answer I got from someone was "I'm not sure what date it's scheduled to be upgraded".
How is it possible for our largest telecomunications company to make such a hopeless blunder? How on earth, if our exchanges are running at very much maximum capacity, is LLU going to aid the situation when the buck still stops with the owner of that local loop? I remind you again, we're not talking about getting ADSL in Alexandrea (which is actualy possible), we're talking about somewhere which is a stones throw from the JSE. A place where many Telkom executives themselvs live. You can even leave asside ADSL, they are not provisioning voice either and their staff are hopeleslly clueless about WiMAX which (according to the hopeless staff) requires a 30 day wait.In the most simple terms, Telkom have told me to use 3G (no thanks) or to go to hell.
So I'm sorry FNB, WebAfrica, Internet Solutions and Nexus. I can't buy your bandwidth anymore even if I wanted to. And even if the local loop was unbundled, there simply isn't one to unbundle for me either. I can only imagine how many other exchanges are in a similar predicament, or very close to it.
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