Million dollar questions

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 8 January 2007

MD of ICT research firm World Wide Worx, Arthur Goldstuck, has for one predicted that over a million people will be using broadband in two years’ time, or by the end of 2008. It sounds great although we have a few questions…

It seems that the biggest winners will be Telkom, iBurst and Sentech if we take Goldstuck’s word for it. He expects Telkom to have just over 500 000 broadband subscribers by the end of 2008. iBurst and Sentech are expected to come second and third respectively by sharing almost another 500 000 broadband subscribers. Logic tells us that there will only be crumbs left for Neotel and others if we use Goldstuck’s prediction as a standard.

Goldstuck has also in essence predicted that Neotel will not make huge waves in the short-term but that the waves generated by Neotel will only be felt from 2008 onwards.

While ADSL South Africa agrees that it will take time before Neotel makes any real impact, we have to ask the first million dollar question: “How can Neotel’s presence even be expected ‘to be felt from 2008 onwards’ (Broadband closes in on 1m milestone, Mawson, 5 January 2007) if it will clearly only share crumbs with the rest at the end of 2008? It simply doesn’t make sense.

We shall rather be the odd one out by being more positive about Neotel’s chances because if the above scenario plays out, we shall have to ask the second million dollar question: “Will Neotel ever be able to be real competition to Telkom if things look so gloomy after two years?” We don’t expect Neotel to give Telkom a beating after only two years but if Goldstuck’s prediction becomes true we really don’t have something to smile about, or do we? It will be a sure sign that they have taken us for a ride once again.

Our intention is not to play devil’s advocate here but to look at the whole thing from a different perspective. Of course we want to see Neotel at least outwitting Sentech by the end of 2008, if we hit the million plus mark. While this might be a crazy notion at best we’re sure there’s thousands of broadband consumers out there that will agree with us. We’re sure many of them are fed up enough about the state of affairs caused by Telkom to keep up with it for much longer.

We predict that those consumers will come out in their thousands over the next two years to support Neotel and help them to go the extra mile. We predict that the headlines in the papers will mention a revolution. We predict that consumers will not just fall for a reduction in prices or the introduction of better technology as such, which will be a major part of Telkom’s strategy forward, but will want to see better overall service as well. If Telkom can suddenly come up with all three, although it will be a good thing, it will also be a sure sign that they have been taken us for a bigger ride than initially evident. Our third million dollar question: “How will Telkom be able to accommodate all the extra broadband consumers predicted if they can’t even deliver decent service at present?”

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) knows that you will rally in your thousands when the chance presents itself to make it clear once and for all that you’re fed up with the likes of Telkom.