Is this war? Broadband(ish) style

 

Few things ruin your evening relaxing at a 5–star guest house in a lush Westville suburb (if you travel to Durban on business… there is no place like Ntengu Lodge – service as it should be defined at prices you pay at City Lodge!) like getting a call from SAfm’s AMLive to ask if you’ll comment at 06h35 next morning on Vodacom’s recent broadband price reductions (eh?  I thought it was MTN dropping prices?!).  Shove a microphone or camera at me and my palms wet themselves!  Not quite sure where they got the idea that Storm is a telecoms analysis outfit… need to work on our branding more! :/

So, armed with my HSDPA card and my coal-powered laptop, I started to catch up on recent events, but not before I’d asked Sentient to do some research.  Amazing how quickly one can assimilate info with an pseudo-broadband IP connection!  (please… you cannot call sub 2Mbps true broadband)

Is it a price war or not?  Opinions seem to be divided.  Roger from Sentient:

It may or may not be a price war... but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, there is a reasonable chance it's a waterfowl of species anatidae

I tend to agree, but then what is the difference between a brief skirmish and a full out war?  The determination to hold one’s position?  What difference will this make to consumers?  With all the recent jockeying, there is a lot of confusion over the various offerings.  MyADSL is always a good source of info on local broadband as Rudolf and his merry mates are fixated on it.  Yes, yes, I know… that why it is actually called MyADSL!

I have no idea if Telkom are going to fire a retaliatory broadside and turn this into a real firefight.  History leads me to doubt it.  But if they don’t, they will lose business to HSDPA, iBurst and MyWireless.  Even with self-install as an option, it is easier (and cheaper) to sign up for wireless.  Cheaper despite the fact that wireless networks are more expensive to deploy.  And don’t forget that the most of the copper has been in the ground way past its ROI period.  I certainly hope Telkom retaliates.

But price is only one aspect.  I want DSL that doesn’t fall asleep on the job, like some Cabinet Ministers we know.  Let’s see some differentiation on contention ratios for a start.  And I still have to hear when we’re going to get access to some of the fibre that is supposedly being force fed down cable ducts… <sigh>

Anyway, all this got me wondering how one can compare the various offerings so I took a stab at creating a graphic to make it a bit easier (click on the thumb-nail below).  I’m not convinced I shouldn’t have opted for bars of some sort, but after giving up on the bubble representation on the data in Excel, I resorted to creating a balloon farm of my own.  Let me know if you spot some errors. And lets have some bright spark track down a Web2.0 app we can hook up to MyADSL and make some sense of it all.

That’s me.

ps.  Joe has just chastised me (and rightly so) that I’ve left out Amobia and Uninet.  An oversight I will address after I’ve had some sleep!

Comments

[Joe]

Dave, how about that update to the diagram ? (-:

Your loyal fans need the stats.

[Joe]

I think your diagram needs to compare price better.

Something like the best R/(Mbps*Traffic) ratio.

Please add the Amobia and Uninet product range to your masterpiece (: