Is CEO compensation in South Africa out of control?

It has been revealed in an investigation done by accountants firm COMPUTUS, not only that CEO compensation in South Africa is out of control, but that CEOs operating in the telecoms industry in South Africa are on average earning R11.5 million each in remuneration per annum.

The worker is worthy of his pay…

Yes, the worker is worthy of his pay, but it’s clear that CEO compensation in South Africa, especially the compensation of CEOs in the telecoms industry, is way out of control when compared to the ‘peanuts’ the Average Joes have to be satisfied with.

If one considers the above-mentioned figure of R11.5 million then one can understand why many Average Joes get hot under the collar when they learn of this. To give our fellow Average Joes some perspective, while we at ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) are not up to date with the salaries average workers are getting paid in the telecoms sector, we can tell you with confidence that it’s possible to employ at least 115 people as Bank Tellers at one of our local banks for R11.5 million per annum! We’re sure that many will agree with us when we say that CEO compensation of a million or even R2 million per annum is acceptable from a South African point of view, but AVERAGE compensation in the vicinity of R11.5 million per annum per CEO is a bit steep...

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Vox Telecom: New and innovative products and services

Vox Telecom’s share price currently trades at about 34c per share, but whether this places a fair value on the group’s worth is debatable. It is no secret that Vox and many other players in the telecoms market are facing tough times, but Vox is clearly not taking any of it by sitting down if one considers all the new products and services that they’ve launched or plan to launch in the months to come.

New and innovative products and services…

Vox has launched and is planning to launch many new and innovative products and services...

Read the rest of the article here.

ADSL Broadband: Is a Telkom 10Mbps ADSL speed upgrade imminent?

One cannot help to ask the above question after it has emerged that many Telkom ADSL subscribers are already enjoying ADSL Broadband at speeds of up to 10Mbps. Telkom denies that they’ve started an ADSL speed upgrade, and has so far largely refused to comment on rumours, but it’s clear that the chances of a 10Mbps ADSL speed upgrade in the immediate future have increased tenfold...

Read the rest of the article here.

Mobile Broadband: Vodacom announces more rate cuts

Vodacom is heating up the Mobile Broadband market quite nicely, especially if one considers the ample rate cuts Vodacom has announced in terms of the Broadband Advanced packages they plan to ‘re-introduce’ later this month.

Broadband Advanced rate cuts of up to 36%…

Vodacom has recently announced that they are not only planning to ‘re-introduce’ their Broadband Advanced packages (500MB, 1GB and 2GB) later this month, but also at rates that are up to 36% lower than before.

In fact, the Broadband Advanced rate cuts planned by Vodacom will under cut MTN’s Mobile Broadband rates (assuming that MTN’s rates stay the same until month end), and although not significantly, it should force MTN to consider cutting their Mobile Broadband rates as well. This is despite the fact that MTN still offers better value for money when one considers MTN’s overall value proposition...

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ADSL Broadband: Web Africa cuts ADSL prices

ADSL Broadband price cuts are always welcomed and it’s not different this time around. Web Africa has recently dropped their per GB ADSL Broadband prices to very reasonable levels.

R10 per GB ADSL…

It seems that Web Africa has taken note of calls to join the broadband price cut party in a more splendid manner, especially after the first salvo of ADSL price cuts by them earlier this year triggered criticism.

The above is especially true if one considers that they have dropped their per GB ADSL prices to as low as R10 through the unveiling of their ‘Titan DSL Specials’ recently. In addition, Web Africa has decided to drop the ADSL top-up rate to R15 per GB for their data and complete subscribers. The ADSL top-up rate refers to the rate one pays per GB if one wishes to top up one’s ADSL Broadband bandwidth. This normally happens when one’s regular/fixed monthly bandwidth allocation or ADSL Cap is depleted or reached...

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New Broadband Service Launched

Our loyal supporters and all new visitors should welcome the service we have just launched on the main ADSL South Africa site (www.adslsouthafrica.co.za).

The service is called the ‘One Stop Broadband Request Service’. If you are interested in getting broadband, would like to upgrade to broadband or just want to go for better pricing or switch to another ISP, then you will find the service very useful. You only have to submit your details ONCE. After this, you will receive multiple broadband quotes from various ISPs.

Be sure to visit the following link for more details:

http://www.adslsouthafrica.co.za/One%20Stop%20Broadband%20Request%20Service.htm

The ADSL South Africa Team

Neotel’s popularity will grow with coverage

Neotel has recently launched the first of their converged consumer packages, but when you walk down the street and ask people if they know about Neotel, the most popular answer you will get is: “Neotel? Neotel who? What are you talking about?”

This may be the case now, but things are going to change as South Africa’s second national operator (SNO) or Neotel’s coverage expands and more and more people start to make use of their products and services. There is no doubt in our minds that Neotel’s popularity will grow with the expansion of its coverage area.

The reason for this is simple: Neotel do not only offer bundled or converged Internet data, voice and SMS services through their NeoConnect offerings but also quality and affordability.

NeoConnect Lite…

NeoConnect Lite offers 1 package at this stage:

NeoConnect Lite - 2GB of bandwidth or Internet data, personalised email, 25 free on-net SMS’s and 500 free on-net voice minutes for the all-inclusive price of R299 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

NeoConnect Prime…

NeoConnect Prime offers 5 packages to choose from, which include:

NeoConnect Prime Unlimited - Unlimited bandwidth or Internet data, 2000 free on-net minutes, 120 free local & regional to Telkom off-net minutes, 100 free on-net SMS and 100 free national SMS. All-inclusive price of R999 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

NeoConnect Prime 15G – 15GB bandwidth or Internet data, 1500 free on-net minutes, 60 free local & regional to Telkom off-net minutes, 75 free on-net SMS and 50 free national SMS. All-inclusive price of R699 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

NeoConnect Prime 10G – 10GB bandwidth or Internet data, 1000 free on-net minutes, 30 free local & regional to Telkom off-net minutes and 50 free on-net SMS. All-inclusive price of R599 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

NeoConnect Prime 5G – 5GB bandwidth or Internet data, 1000 free on-net minutes, 15 free local & regional to Telkom off-net minutes and 50 free on-net SMS. All-inclusive price of R499 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

NeoConnect Prime 2.5G – 2.5GB bandwidth or Internet data, 1000 free on-net minutes and 50 free on-net SMS. All-inclusive price of R399 per month on a 24-month contract. The price includes the device charge, VAT and all other monthly charges.

It’s clear from the above that Neotel means business and has done their homework. Neotel knows what The Average Joe wants.

This is only the beginning. We can expect the launch of even better and more affordable packages from Neotel in the coming months. ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) is especially looking forward to the launch of Neotel’s first ADSL based offerings.

Will Telkom survive?

We believe Telkom won’t survive in its current form.

The Average Joes are fed up of Telkom and their BS to say the least. They are going to answer Neotel’s call in their thousands and millions when the time is right. We at ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), Average Joes like you, will answer Neotel’s call when the time is right for us. The time will be right for us when Neotel got us covered and the same should be true for you. It is then time to get out of the trenches and take the fight to Telkom.

If Sexwale or someone or some group don’t succeed in buying Telkom in its totality and change the way Telkom does business, then Telkom is doomed. Telkom will be sold-off in separate units at an auction if that doesn’t happen soon.

Be sure to visit Neotel’s website for more info.

The ADSL South Africa Team

Dark Fibre Africa

The ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) Team travel to Sandton almost every day to compete in the 8 to 5 rat race like most of The Average Joes in South Africa. Those of you who share this road with us would have noticed the thin line snaking down Sandton Drive (and other roads as well). Yes, the same line that slowed down traffic recently to the frustration of many.

Great was the relief when we discovered that it’s all for a good cause...

Dark Fibre Africa is not the end of Africa or anything of that sort but the name of a company that’s helping to bring light to Africa. Dark Fibre Africa is busy rolling out fibre optic cables that are needed to bring down the cost of broadband in South Africa.

A different approach…

Unlike other companies who lay cables mostly in pavements, Dark Fibre Africa, lay cables directly in our roads. They do this by cutting through the tarmac, laying the cable and then tar it all up again.

Even more interesting…

Dark Fibre Africa is not a telecoms provider but an infrastructure provider.

Their plan is simple: If you do not have a licence to provide telecoms services, piggy back on those who do have licences and lay down as many cables as possible and sell it to them.

They have so far managed to get Vodacom and another anonymous telecoms service provider onboard.

The ADSL South Africa Team

More time to surf the net

ADSL and other broadband users in South Africa who frequently surf the net will welcome the fact that Eskom has promised to halt ‘scheduled load shedding’ for now. This means, if correctly interpreted, that we will have more time to surf the net than during the recent bombardment of load shedding.

Now some of you might say, what load shedding, because it did not affect your Internet surfing or way of life at all, because you are one of the lucky ones to enjoy the services of a backup power generator or was at work or somewhere else during load shedding. Well, to be honest, most of The Average Joes in South Africa just did not, still not have the money to afford such luxury, and have been left with candles and other primitive sources of energy to combat the consequences of load shedding. God knows there is simply not enough money left for generators and such when we are already struggling to cover the raising cost of fuel, food, et cetera. It is therefore great news that Eskom has promised to halt scheduled load shedding for now.

Can we trust Eskom to keep their word? Hell no some will say, and to be honest, you can count ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) among the sceptics. Despite this, the idea or prospect of no load shedding is music in the ears of many consumers in South Africa.

Winter is on its way as many of us have observed and felt over the last couple of days. It will be interesting to see if Eskom will be able to keep their promise of no ‘scheduled load shedding’ when the Winter is here. It is no secret that thousands of heaters, electric blankets and geysers will be working over time to keep the nation warm this coming Winter.

We have the funny feeling that unscheduled load shedding, not that Eskom kept to a schedule in the first place, is going to be more of a nightmare than ‘scheduled load shedding’. After all, nothing stops Eskom from load shedding the living hell out of us whether it is scheduled or not.

Despite the above, we need to use the extra time we have to surf the net before the next load shedding starts. :-)

The ADSL South Africa Team

Telkom might fall flat on its face

Neotel has launched the first of their consumer packages on Friday. This must come as great news to entrenched consumers in South Africa.

It’s finally time to come out of the trenches and take the fight to Telkom. The NeoConnect Prime 10G package, alhough only available to consumers in certain parts of Pretoria and Johannesburg at this stage, is going to take the telecoms market in South Africa by storm. The package/bundle include a wireless Internet, voice and SMS offering which offers excellent value for money. High-end users and small businesses, the targeted market segment of the NeoConnect Prime 10 G package, can get 10 GB of bandwidth, 1000 Neotel to Neotel call minutes, 30 Local and Regional Neotel to Telkom call minutes and 50 Neotel to Neotel SMS’s per month at a price of R599 per month all costs included (VAT, device charges, service rentals, et cetera).

Excellent value for money...

It is easy to see that Neotel offers excellent value for money with their NeoConnect Prime 10G package, especially when compared to similiar offerings from other players in the market. iBurst for instance offers 10 GB of bandwidth and iCall with a webphone for R1 139 per month (R99 activation fee excluded), while Vodacom and MTN offers more or less the same service at R2 099 and R2 005 (R99 activation fee excluded) respectively.

What about the cost charged when one is subscribed to the NeoConnect Prime 10G package and move/go outside the bundle?

Very reasonable out of bundle rates.

The rates table on Neotel’s website is evident of the fact that Neotel is not planning to rip you off when you go outside the bundle. Neotel will charge you 8 cents per MB for bandwidth if you move outside the bundle while iBurst will charge you 95 cents per MB, Vodacom R1 per MB and MTN R1.20 per MB.

What is out of bundle?

Out of bundle is when one moves outside the montly limits set by the package you are subscribed to.

For example: If you are subscribed to the NeoConnect Prime 10G package and use more than 10GB of bandwidth per month, then you will have to pay for the additional or out of bundle bandwidth you have used.

In other words, out of bundle can be seen as the extra money you pay for exceeding monthly limits.

What about speed?

2.4 Mbps.

The Internet access offering which form part of the NeoConnect Prime 10G package/bundle is fuelled by wireless mobile CDMA2000 technology. This technology makes peak speeds of 2.4 Mbps possible. This compares very favourably to iBurst’s 1 Mbps, Vodacom’s 3.6 Mbps and MTN’s 1.8 Mbps.

In other words, the speed of Neotel’s Internet access offering compares favourably to the Internet access speeds offered by iBurst, Vodacom and MTN.

What about assembly and installation? Will it take me ages?

Assembly and installation are easy and should not take you ages to complete.

MyBroadband tested the assembly and installation of Neotel’s ‘converged Internet phone’ and reported that ‘it took less than five minutes from opening the box to surfing the web.’

In other words, it is evident that Neotel has put a lot of thought into making assembly and installation as easy and fast as possible.

We can go on and on here about other benefits of Neotel’s NeoConnect Prime 10G package, but the important thing is that Neotel has not failed us and brought a great package at a great price to the table. Consumers can expect the launch of even more exciting packages, tailor-made for their needs, as Neotel role out their services to ultimately cover 80% of South Africa.

The ADSL South Africa Team

Guilty as charged!

Ok, we're guilty as charged. We've definitely neglected the ADSL South Africa blog over the past month. In our defence we will say we were busy with stuff the average Joes do this time of the year. Visiting family and friends and just having fun (and doing some work of course).

Well, that's it for now. Enjoy your weekend and have a splendid holiday and festive season. :-)

The ADSL South Africa Team

Hell Week for ADSL South Africa!

The past week can at best be described as 'Hell Week' for ADSL South Africa. This is the reason we left the blog unattended for some time.

If it was not hackers that tried to bring the site down or post obscenities, we had endless problems with Microsoft's infamous operating system, VISTA.

We don't want to focus on the hackers or wannabe hackers but on VISTA, the wannabe operating system or whatever you want to call it...

We bought new hardware recently and VISTA was included as part of the package. We didn't want it but decided to give it a test drive and see for ourselves if its really that bad. What an eye opener, Windows Vista is probably the biggest pile of sh%te that hit the shelves in a million years. It has the capability to slow the fastest and meanest machine down to a speed not even comparable to the time it takes an ancient mummy to crawl from a burning tomb while under fire from the biggest cannon in the world. It slows broadband connections down to a point that even dial up can beat, it takes ages to open a simple MS Word document, et cetera.

At some stage we thought it were viruses or spyware that's slowing down the system but a thorough test revealed that the problem is with VISTA itself. Needless to say we're in the process of switching back to Windows XP Professional. Windows XP Professional is probably not the best operating system in the world but at least we will have our broadband connection back.

It is really beyond believe that the likes of Incredible Connection and others don't have the balls to stand up and tell Microsoft where to stick Vista. Sorry, we forgot, they don't really care about the average Joe like you and me but only about the profits they can make.

It makes one sick to your stomach when you realise Microsoft and some dealers are actually making DOUBLE the profits with VISTA. Most people switch back to older operating systems after they discover how bad VISTA really is, unfortunately in many instances people have to fork out extra money to switch because the dealers will as sure as hell not give any refunds, even when someone was forced to buy VISTA as part of a package. It won't surprise us at all if people shop around for illegal copies because who is really prepared to spend their hard-earned money on a 'scam' like this?

This is just another example of how a monopoly can messes things up for decent people. If it's not Telkom and their buddies screwing us over, it's Microsoft and their 'little whores' doing the rounds.

Have a splendid weekend and be sure to try VISTA out when its out of the 'DEVELOPMENT STAGE'. In the meantime, stick to your money and your guns. :-)

The ADSL South Africa Team

A light goes on

Telkom Media made it clear during the recent Media and Broadcasting conference in Sandton that they ‘…will need far higher bandwidth and higher usage limits to provide users with the services they envisage’ (Telkom Media looking for higher ADSL caps, MyBroadband, 6 November 2007).

Well, we honestly can’t say that’s groundbreaking news. Why don’t you go to your parent company and tell that to them? We can certainly not help you and we’re definitely not daft enough to think that you can run any decent IP-TV service via your parent’s pathetic excuse of a service currently.

Of course, your parent is upgrading its ADSL network to ADSL 2+ which promises speeds way over 10 Mbps, but it’s not the point we want to make here.

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) can’t help to bite at anything Telkom related. We suppose it’s a bad habit that will blow over one of these days. :-)

The ADSL South Africa Team

Long live ADSL Broadband!

One can't help to utter the above phrase after one read the article: The future of broadband in SA can only be wireless (Hilton Tarrant, Moneyweb, 7 November 2007).

We tend to agree with one of our local heroes, Matthew Tagg , who said in a recent Newsweek interview that Web Africa ‘…has chosen to focus selling ADSL services as this is the technology with the most long term promise’ (Taking on the big boys, Ben Kelly, Finweek, 4 September 2007). Tagg ‘…does not believe that the wireless services, even Wimax, will be able to offer the speeds that customers will be demanding in the near future’ (Taking on the big boys, Ben Kelly, Finweek, 4 September 2007).

THE BIG QUESTION: Is it a FACT that WiMAX and other wireless services '...will be able to offer the speeds that customers will be demanding in the near future'? No, it's not a fact and therefore it's astonishing at best to see someone writing ADSL off just like that.

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) believes WiMAX is a great means of getting connected but it was definitely not proven yet that it will offer the only or ultimate broadband Internet solution in the future.

The safest bet is to place one's bets on the future of both ADSL and wireless services...

For instance: WiMAX is a great alternative to ADSL in the country side because of old copper infrastructure relating to ADSL, et cetera but ADSL definitely has what's needed to bring super fast Internet speeds to people living in the city or metropolitan areas.

Well, that being written, it will be interesting to see where this will go since copper thieves, probably WiMAX's greatest supporters (:-), are definitely doing their bit to hamper the progress of ADSL.

Enjoy the weekend. Have lots of fun. :-)

The ADSL South Africa Team

ADSL South Africa starts blogging

Welcome to ADSL South Africa's first blog and our first post.

I can't figure out for the life of me why we decided to start blogging. Anyways here you will find our ideas and thoughts in its most primitive form. Not to worry though because it will not involve any cave crawling or sucking up to Telkom for that matter. In all honesty, despite the fact that one wonders some times if we're not still living in the Dark Ages where Internet access is of a concern in South Africa. Luckily we're starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel and would like all decent South Africans to join us for the ride.

There are still a lot of good guys left out there. People that are working hard behind the scenes to bring you bigger and better options. If I may quote one of the good guys: "Local bandwidth after the cap is going to be here very shortly. We already have a product operational, but have not launched officially yet."

We leave you with this for now. Be sure to come back for more. :-)