hitting the wire*

Getting things done in Africa.

I'm often leaping on the old soapbox to rant about the need for government to get the hell out of telecoms and concentrate on setting up clever policies to lure the private sector into achieving their goals for them.  If there is one area which is proving me right, it is the undersea cable 'race' that is underway,(not that any clever policies are involved - just good old fashioned competition and profit motives).

I often find Ivo Vegter's pen more negative and biting than even I can enjoy, but his article in today's ITWeb column "the spike" entitled "Seacom walks on water" is very good. 

I can't wait to see broadband made more accessible, cheaper and actually broad enough to deliver the likes of Software as a Service to South Africans.  I will personally be very annoyed with Seacom if they do not follow through on their promises to drop prices of international bandwidth by close to an order of magnitude.

we live in hope.

Paid R1.4b... now what you gonna do with it?

I see in ITWeb today that MTN have announced that they are buying Verizon.  More industry consolidation.  We have yet to see any real signs of Vodacom's decision to build rather than acquire and ISP in order to address the lack of a data focused Service Provision arm (yeah, sure they'll be quick to tell you they offer 3G/HSDPA, but there is more to IP than basic connectivity).  MTN, who have "had" MTNNS for years, have not really (imho) made the most of the hay while the sun was shining happily on them.  They've functioned more or less as cousins who tolerate each other's presence in deference to a common lineage rather than as close family collaborating to mutual benefit.

So, what will MTN do with Verizon, a solid operation which has been hamstrung by bureaucracy forced on them by a large multinational parent?  Will they end up another distant cousin, or will we see some innovative converged services appearing?  Time will tell.

Not quite amAzed, but impressed.

Two weeks back I mentioned I'd been approached to blog about a GPS you can load onto your cell phone, the amAze GPS.  I suggested they let me have a unit to play with before I did so.  Here are my impressions.

Conclusion.

For those who don't want to wade through the detail, I'll start at the end shall I?  I was not blown away by this GPS system, but once I'd got the hang of how to operate it, used it a few times and I sat back to consider the value for money, I had to admit it is.  Value for money that is. 

It finds what you're looking for (if you're not vague) and it takes you there. To within metres.  At a fraction of the price.  (OK, so it did fail me once in Jozi, but I was warned by my host that not even her husband's Garmin can find their street in Bryanston!)  Just don't run out of phone battery while blindly following the GPS!  Quiet panic.

How it all works.

The software is free and the little bluetooth GPS unit is R500.00.  So where is the catch you may ask?  As I understand it from David Lehman of Phoneit GPS, the plan is to link location based advertising to the system, in the form of banner ads (going to be a challenge on a small screen!) and an opening screen sponsor will fund the system.  The ads will appear during times when information is called (via GPRS/HSDPA) from the back end server during an address search for example, and they will last 10 seconds. They could be both visual and verbal with the capability to click and view the profile of the advertiser and even navigate to their web site.  They do not intend targetting the ads at specific LSM or interest groupings.

The software works on a range of phones.  If your phone has an onboard GPS (like the Nokia N95), you're away at no cost, if not, it will work with almost any Bluetooth GPS unit – Phoneit GPS have apparently used Holux, On course, Global Top, QStarz and a few others.  

You won't be able to buy an ad-free version per se, but you can create a closed user group where they will white label the product and allow a specific group to receive only the white label sponsors message to his specific user group.  Now there's a corporate gift with an ROI! ;)  A closed user group rate is related to the number of users and would be negotiated based on the customization required – standard sponsor rate for opening screen as example is R1.50 per active user per month.

The experience.

Setup was easy.  As long as you were reasonably specific about the suburb you were heading for (specifying "Cape Town" just did not cut it!), it was not too difficult to find a location.  There is a postal code field which helps a lot! The voice prompt was not irritating and gave due warning of changes of course.  It did not interrupt phone calls, but overrode whatever other app I was using at the time.  Prompts were generally timely and unambiguous.  Deviating from the planned route caused furious recalculations which took far too long over GPRS (a good minute before it was directing me again, which had me missing turns in Jozi!). 3G/HSDPA a must. 

Oops.

I thought the unit had been remotely disabled when the evaluation week was up, but was told I'd be the first person to have bust one or had one fail.  Sheepishly, I discovered I'd unwittingly disabled bluetooth on my phone! <smacks forehead> 

Oh dear.

One irritation that hit me early on was the weird AC plug on the power adapter.  Fortunately I have one of the neat little gadgets which converts just about any known international plug format to the familiar one we know here in SA.  The CD did not have much on it from a usefulness point of view except a demo that needed bluetooth (which my laptop does not - long story - don't ask!).  The 'manual' is all of 3.5 pages long - the English portion that is. The website is hosted overseas and response times are not great.

Set up.

You have 2 options for getting going; a web based form to complete, download software and install via PC/phone; the other is kicked off by SMS'ing a key word to a +44 number.  I resorted to the SMS route and have to say it was painless and it was a matter minutes before I had the app installed and was playing with it.

Navigating - the app.

Large icons.  Fairly simple choices. 
"Search" - which allows you to enter an address (drop downs seem to be limited to names it learns from you), keywords or even a weather forecast request.
"Calculate route" - allows you to specify start and end and get an abbreviated route description and even a demo 'drive through' of the route.  The demo could move a little faster...
"Map" - which allows you to see either a street map view, an aerial photo view or a mix of both.  You can zoom in to "house" level or out to country level.
"Favourites" - which allows you to save locations for future use.  You're limited to 10 locations though, which could be a bit frustrating.
"Tools" - allows you to adjust various settings like language and metrics,  scan for bluetooth GPS units in range, and the like.

"Help" - Some basic user instructions for the above choices.

Hidden costs.

Marc Forrest warned me that it might "chow bandwidth".  I monitored my billing online and could see nothing that made me worried.  I tried switching between "arrows" mode (where the display only gives you the next turning / route choice) and "map" mode (where you can see the compass icon marking your position moving through the map) and it was noticeable that "map" mode cost me more; and here we're talking R2.00 for a trip instead of R0.20.  Bear in mind this was using GPRS and not 3G/HSDPA.  ('Your mileage may vary' as they say!)

Navigating - the route.

With a bunch of noisy kids in the car, it was necessary to use the   hands-free.  Without the kids, leaving the phone (in my case a Nokia E65) in the dash and following the leading lady was just fine.  Once you'd identified your destination using a street number, keyword and if possible a postal code, it was a simple matter to tell it to take you there and wait for the prompts.  The routes tended to not always be enitrely logical when I was in familialr territory, but having set the app for "fastest" and not "shortest" route it is not surprising.  Deviating from route usually initiated much furious route recalculations, including "make a U-turn at the first available opportunity".

If I was specific, it was accurate to within 20 metres.

Will I buy this?

I have to say that until I had to drive somewhere I had never been before, I had no real need of it.  But when it came to finding Linen Drawer, the guys in Paarl who are donating linen to one of our CSI projects, or the way to Little Tuscany guest house in Jozi, it was a boon.  I could see a company handing this out to Sales reps and field techs particularly if there was some way of securely loading site info into a drop-down.  I'm sure the Garmin's and Tom-tom's of the world (and here I need to say I have never used them) have fancier features etc, but this found where I needed to go and got me there.  At R500.00, I may well buy one and leave it the cubby hole for one of those "lost" days.

The ultimate test?

The good people at Phoneit GPS have agreed to donate the unit I have here to the Hout Bay Volunteer Ambulance Unit who tell me their biggest challenge is always their way to the patient without getting lost.  So I'll be touching base with the dedicated paramedics in a month or so to see what difference it has made to their lives and those of their patients.

I'm going to be quite sorry to hand over this little sucker, especially as a great idea for a location-based service I'd love in my car daily has just hit me and I am compelled to pursue it... ;)

that's me. looking for myself.

Bring back my ISDN connection!

Every time I drive crawl through rush hour traffic, I think of what an impact a decent broadband system in SA would make to the economy, with many people being able to work from home.  Just yesterday I wrote the following in reply to a UK based customer complaining about our quote for a 2Mbps connection to the UK:

>The cost is approx 6 times what we would pay in the UK > for the same circuit – I know bandwidth can be
>  expensive in South Africa but is this the best price
>  available or are there any other options?

Considering telecoms pricing in general (driven primarily by Telkom's continued monopoly of local loop and international gateway) is acknowledged to be 10x higher than it should be, and that Seacom (due in 2009) are proposing prices of 15x less than Telkom are charging the likes of Storm for IPLC's now, 6x what you're paying in the UK is bloody good!  There could conceivably be some crowd prepared to cut their margins to ridiculous levels to better this, but I would not buy from them myself.

>do you have an uncontended 2mb ADSL option?

No such beast in SA.  DSL is a contended technology anywhere in the world.  The difference being that in places like the UK you can pay more for a "low contention / business" DSL as opposed to a "high contention / consumer" DSL.  Here, we're stuck with the "consumer" version where the telco refuse to quote contention ratios. 

An here is what my 512kbps DSL line looks like today folks as I write this from my "home office":

ISDN used to give me 64kbps or 128kbps day in and day out.  I cannot access my fileserver.  I can hardly pull mail.

Telkom's quoted speeds for this line:

Down stream line sync speed minimum 416kbps; maximum 512kbps and up stream: minimum 192kbps; maximum 256kbps.

And the Telkom Product Manager for DSL had the bare faced cheek to tell me (when I suggested he differentiate his products based on contention ratio's) that he was not going to degrade his perfectly good product just to charge less!

Gah! Love to know what parallel world he is living in.

Are SA Universities going down the tubes?

(No boet, I don't have writer's block again... I'm just juggling and dropping too many balls at the moment!  As requested, here is the text of the article that appeared in Business Day.)

The Future of SA’s Universities Lies in the Pipes

Universities are looking for new communications partners to connect them to the world. It’s a big responsibility: without the pipes, they’re going down the tubes, says Storm Telecom business development director Dave Gale

There is an aphorism in academic circles: “publish or die”. If you’re not publishing original research, or contributing to academic discourse at a high level, you’re not only unable to compete – you’re not even in the game. South African universities have to struggle with transformation, with creating skills relevant to our country’s needs, with very limited funding, and with being on the far side of a long plane ride to major centres of research. It’s pretty tough.

But they have been doing it. South African universities are still managing to stay engaged with top-tier research institutions in the US and Europe. And – more importantly, with institutions in China and India, which are our peers as “almost developed” developing countries. This is particularly true in the engineering and sciences fields, where technology is not just key – it’s all-important.

So yes, we can hold our heads high – but much of the success achieved is through sheer determination and grit, because our universities still have to struggle every day with wholly inadequate network infrastructure.

How inadequate? Put it this way … South Africa connects into GÉANT (Gigabit European Academic Network) at 155Mbps. European institutions connect in at multiples of 10Gbps. That is not two or three, but hundreds of times as fast! Fair enough, they’re close to each other… but China isn’t, and links in at multiple gigabits per second.

This isn’t just a my-pipe-is-bigger-than-yours locker-room size contest. It’s a basic requirement for participating in international research collaborations. It’s a basic requirement for developing new technologies. It’s a basic requirement to be competitive in the modern world. We’re not trying to keep up with the Joneses – we can’t. We don’t have the funding or expertise to stay up with the Cambridges or MITs of the world. We’re needing to keep up with the da Silvas and Novaks and Guptas and Changs. Our peers like Brazil, Hungary, India, China.

There are any number of modern technologies that specifically require high speed, low latency connections, notably for voice and video services. This is where a huge amount of commercial opportunity awaits. Many Web technologies (especially in the Web 2.0 space) assume a high speed Internet connection to function effectively. Modern business applications are often the aggregation of multiple services being pulled in from servers scattered around the office, country or planet. Many consumer and business applications are embedding voice and video. All require high speed links.

We don’t just need fast links to make applications work, we also need development skills and technology strategies that can only be honed in a high-speed network environment. If our students and researchers are learning in an environment that mimics the business environment of five years ago, they’re in trouble.

Turning academic achievement into business success is vital for the future of South Africa’s economy. Look at Yeigo, a startup created by some UCT computer science graduates and launched through the Cape IT Initiative’s Bandwidth Barn business accelerator. This company designed a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to allow you to use your cellphones data channel to make cheap voice calls.

Great technology, especially in telecoms-constrained Africa. But while it’s valuable now, in many ways it points towards a developmental dead-end. The rest of the world is heading to broadband with voice running as a virtually free service on it. We’re developing better tyres for the wheel, when the rest of the world is climbing onto rocket-ships.

So where to from here?

TENET (South Africa’s Tertiary Academic Network, which connects the major tertiary education institutions) is looking for new network partners as its old contract with Telkom comes to an end. It is looking to a new breed of communications service providers to give it high-tech network services that also stretch limited budgets the furthest.

Technology is not just an enabler of science and engineering research – it’s a communications enabler. Not only do universities need to provide fast technical resources to laboratories, it needs to provide effective, low cost communications to all staff and students. Cheap international phone calls. Video conferencing. The stuff of collaboration.

This is a critical period for South Africa – in this race, once you fall off the back of the pack, regaining your position becomes well nigh impossible. We’re not trying to win the race – that’s unreasonable. But we must stay in the running.

Oops! ITWeb / Do Broadband - you have to love the irony here!

Spotted by some eagle eyes trawling ITWeb today: This.

OK, so they've fixed the faux pas, but that has to be the most ironic juxtapostion of content I've seen in a while.

my pipe's bigger than yours!

Business Day have published an article under my name today.  I'd love to claim the word-smithing was mine and mine alone, but alas I only briefed the copywriter who has an alarming ability to mimic one's style! 

Roger, how about ghost-writing my blog from now on!  ROTFL!

Good article though - and I can say so shamelessly. ;)

Telkom DSL in less than 2 weeks with free modem, free install for under R350/month, all in.

The following was passed on to me by Sarah Rice.  Lawrence Cawood has graciously  agreed to allow me to publish it here.  If you're looking for a way to get a basic DSL service at a reasonable price with very low (i.e. none whatsoever) setup costs, read on...

"
Lawrence’s Guide to Ordering Home DSL

Step 1: Acquiring a Phone Line

If you already have a phone line, skip to step 2.
In order to make use of the DSL service, you need a permanent telephone line (not prepaid).

Loophole #1: The monthly line rental for a standard telephone line is R99 per month. You could go this route, however there exists a better option... it’s called Telkom Closer, which I’m sure you’ve heard of in the ads.   With Telkom Closer option 1, you pay R120 p/m, and get calls charged at a R1.40 flat rate for an hour at a time when calling local or long distance during callmore.

How does this help with my DSL you may ask? Well, on top of offering great savings for telephone calls (about one-sixth of the standard cost of a call during callmore), Telkom gives you FREE LINE INSTALLATION with this option, which would normally cost you three hundred and something rand. That’s loophole number one (also confirmed by the Telkom consultant I dealt with).   Even paying the extra R20 per month for a year doesn’t add up to the amount that you would usually have to pay once-off for your line installation.   And get this, the monthly line rental for a standard line is going up to R111 tomorrow (the Closer option 1 package is staying the same), so this is obviously the best choice as it includes your line rental, plus you get free phone line installation.   PS: There are other packages, such as Closer option 2 that gives you absolutely free local and long distance calls any time during the day for up to an hour at a time, however this is not necessary if you’re only planning to use DSL.

The process for signing up for a telephone line is as follows:
·        Phone 10219 and speak to a consultant
·        Tell them you want to get a residential phone line installed
·        Tell them you want ‘Closer option 1’
·        Give them your details etc.
·        They give you a date that the technician will come to your premises to install the line. They will tell you 1-2 weeks, but mine took 3 days.
·        Telkom phone you the day before they come to install. You can postpone it if you need to (I did 3 times).
·        Technician phones you in the morning, and then arrives sometime between 9am and 2pm. Installation takes about 30min.
·        You have a phone line

Step 2: Ordering DSL

Loophole #2: It is at this point that you can cancel your ‘Closer’ option. Yip, when you phone to order DSL you can ask the consultant to cancel your Closer option if you wish, which means that you saved the installation cost of your phone line (it already went through as zero on the account) AND you don’t have to pay more for the Closer option. Confirmed as loophole number 2. Stupid Telkom.   However, I would not advise cancelling your Closer option as it’s only R9 p/m more than the standard line rental, and the charge per call stops at the R1.40 flat rate.  

Ok, the first thing you need to decide is, do you want to go big or go home. Going big means having a big budget, and being able to splash out on that 4MB line for 413 bucks per month. Going home means going cheap, so if you’re like me and don’t download movies but instead get them from your friends, you don’t need a 4MB line and can part with R152 bucks p/m for a decent 384kbps connection.

Here are the DSL packages:
1.      384kbps = R152.00 p/m
2.      512kbps = R326.00 p/m
3.      4096kbps = R413.00 p/m

The first option is the most cost effective, as it offers decent gaming speeds, acceptable RDC connections to work over the VPN, and is perfect for browsing. I’d go with that one if you just want entry level DSL (this option was rated SA’s best value for money when it comes to broadband offerings).

Loophole #3: Ah yes, loophole number 3. The most important of all. This little beauty lets you get a FREE DSL modem which would normally cost you R1000, plus free DSL installation. Here’s how...   When ordering DSL, tell the consultant you want the self-install option. This means you will get a free 4-port wireless DSL router, AND you don’t have to pay the R437 DSL installation fee!   But wait, there’s more! Choosing the self-install option also reduces your wait from 4-6 weeks, to less than 2 weeks.   I also thought there was a catch, but there’s no catch... J I think it’s just easier and cheaper for them to offer an incentive to the customers to install DSL themselves.  

The process for signing up for Home DSL is as follows:
·        Phone 10219 and press 3 to speak to a consultant for ADSL
·        Tell them you want Home DSL
·        Tell them you already have an ISP (we’ll get to that later)
·        Tell them you DO want the “self install” option
·        Tell them you DON’T want a contract
·        Give them your details etc.
·        DON’T let them sell you any other crap, cause they always try to confuse you and sell you something extra. Refuse any other options they mention (i.e. TelkomInternet).
·        They say it will take around 23 days (their ‘max’ estimation), but it will probably be around 7 or 8 days. Amazing!
·        Your DSL will be enabled in a week or so (they don’t have to send someone to your house – with self install, this stuff happens on their side)
·        Install the DSL modem yourself (very easy, follow a tutorial – takes half an hour)
·        Done.

Step 3: Finding an ISP
There are many ISP’s offering similar services, so any of them should do. My ISP is WebAfrica (www.webafrica.co.za) who have a great service. If you take a 1GB account, you pay R70 per month. My 3GB cap is R198 p/m. You can buy extra prepaid cap as you need it, for R70 per GB.

With WebAfrica you get a nice admin system to check how much cap you’ve used etc.

Pricing
So, if you’ve taken the optimal route above, your monthly payments will be something like this:
  ADSL subscription (Telkom, DSL 384)   R 152 p/m   
  Line rental (Telkom)   R 120 p/m   
  ISP subscription (WebAfrica, 1GB cap)   R 70 p/m   
Total: R 342 p/m

Summary
So, what have we learned? Well for one, I learned that while Telkom still sucks, they are getting way better at customer service. The last 3 consultants I spoke to were brilliant. Shocking stuff I know.

Second, we learned that you can get DSL at home in under 2 weeks, with a free modem, free installation, for R 342 p/m.
"

As always, your milage may vary as the yanks say - you need to keep your wits about you and assume that at some stage Telkom may wise up and plug some of the loopholes.  In the meantime, feel free to make the most of Lawrence's condensed wisdon here!

Has Mobile Broadband screwed up the GSM networks?

Most of you will know the story about boiling a frog:-  Drop a frog into boiling water and  it will leap out; slowly heat the water in which the frog is floating, and it will slowly cook before it realizes the peril.

'twas here that I posted about the quality of of the GSM networks in this country dropping off.  We're not going to have anyone from one of the networks officially admit it.  Why would they?  But I've had sufficient anecdotal evidence from people I speak to to indicate that the incidence of "network  busy" (or just unavailable) and dropped calls has increased in the last few years.

Just this last week, I was told (off the record of course) by a representative from one of the mobile networks that where they used to install two 2Mbps COFLs (Cellular Operator Fixed Links) to each base station (one to carry the voice traffic, one as backup/loadsharing), they now install six to eight, and despite the increase, those are often congested.  Why?  3G/HSDPA of course.  A 2G voice call takes up 9.6kbps (using "full rate"; "half rate" for calls when a base station is more than 70% saturated).  3G can take up to 384kbps (on downlink); HSDPA up to 1.8Mbps (on downlink).  The equipment at the Base Station and at the Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) for 2G & 3G is separate, but the backhaul from Base Station to MSC (the COFL) is used for both 2G & 3G. 

And there is the problem.  Congestion on the COFL's caused by mobile broadband affects voice calls.

So why don't they upgrade the COFL's?

Until recently, the Mobile Operators were obliged to get the COFL's from Telkom. Telkom can't keep up.  They've got fibre galore.  They have however, over the past few years, lost so many network planning & installation staff capable of handling the necessary roll-out of WiMAX, NGN, Metro Ethernet, COFL's, etc, they're running ragged.  And with others (like MTN & Vodacom) now rolling out similar networks now, it is unlikely they're likely to solve this issue soon.

Is it a wonder the GSM guys are gagging to be allowed to use WiMAX for backhaul; why they are rolling out metro fibre networks and NGN's?

One negative impact of a market that is growing rapidly is the lack of skilled resource.  Ask any recruitment agency right now to find you good ITC sales people, developers, network architects, etc.  Rocking horse sh*t is easier to find.

We need good broadband to be as accessible as possible in this country.  We have a way to go before we get there.  In the meantime we will have to accept that the way will be a little bumpy.

VoIPTopia @ the June 2007 CT 27 dinner.

I was honoured to be asked by Dave Duarte to give a brief presentation at the last 27 dinner in Cape Town.   The guys from MissingLink have made a video of my 5+ minute rambling available on Youtube.  Before (& if!) you watch the clip you should know that I showed the "VoIPTopia" clip which we created for the Broadband Summit in Feb, which I posted about here.  (that is me... I've just stopped shaving so often)

The last time I watched myself on video was when I participated in a roleplay where I was a CEO of a company guilty of some disaster like a toxic chemical spill on the N1 being grilled by John Bishop (those of you younger than 40 may not recall the sharp, incisive, rather intimidating style of the man).  I won a dare & a case of cider by holding up a mini "Hi Mom" banner at the start.  Ah me, I must try and dig out the VHS clip and get it digitised.  Would be a good for a laugh I'm sure.

Henk was most amused that my notes were in the form of a mindmap - there is no way I can speak from a prepared text:

that's me.