Well, what a week this has been for South African internet consumers. We have literally gone from 0 to hero in 1 week, no thanks to the likes of Mweb, FNB, Afrihost, PayPal; only to mention a few.
Last week this time we were all raving about how we could now get uncapped ADSL for R219 a month. That was big news. We now can use the internet to its full content. I’m not talking about torrents and downloading of dodgy programmes. We can now, view Youtube without having to click pause, we don’t have to check our cap every 3 and half minutes, and moan when on the 15th of every month, we can’t check our internet banking. Now, we can surf without any worry. This is huge in our country, and with Telkom doing tests on 8MB ADSL lines, we will soon start seeing a shift in the way we work.
But today, for me, was one of the biggest achievements in our internet history. The fact that now we can receive money, without complications, and have the ability to sell products on the web without having to apply for merchant accounts. We can now use PayPal. We can now receive money, flawlessly & securely, which we can then deposit into our bank accounts, and withdraw from an ATM. This is a huge step. This now allows Tant Sanie from down the road to sell those delicious jams she has been making for jarre. She can now market her goods across the world, and become that super jam star she always wanted to be :)
In all seriousness though, I am excited to see how we going to progress in the next 6-12 months in South Africa. I think we in for a brilliant ride, and I reckon the competition from broadband providers is going to force the mobile operators to drop their data rates too much much lower than the R2 a meg we seeing now. Yes, they have the advantage of being able to connect remotley, but sooner or later they gonna have to come to the party. I’m predicting 50c a meg before the end of the year :)
A big big big thanks to FNB & Paypal for the invite today to the PayPal event. I am honoured to be part of this ground breaking initiative in South Africa. Also a big thanks to Vincent from Cerebra for the invite and help with the flights etc. Finally a HUGE massive thanks to eBucks who sponsored me a Avis Point to Point chauffeur from the Airport & back to Centurion. I think without dear Andries my driver this morning, I may have gone a bit mental in that silly silly Joburg traffic :)
5 replies on “My, how times have changed”
Been watching the uncapped ADSL developments with interest. With these offerings that don’t allow peer to peer or IRC, how are programmes like Skype going to communicate? And what’s the contention ratio going to look like a month down the line? I have to admit extreme skepticism having seen the “fair use” and “unfair use” terms laid down….
I thought one of the things which was completely missed is how passionate / excited Michael Jordaan is about technology.
I interviewed him today after the presentation and he spent a lot of time telling me about all of the things that he uses his cellphone for in terms of financial services products.
One question I put to him was what the Reserve Banks attitude was toward PayPal when it was brought to them. His answer: “What’s taken SA banks so long to bring it to us?!”
It also says a lot about the Reserve Bank and governments commitment to creating an enabling environment for entrepreneurship in the country.
As the sun sets today I think we can toast the country we live in – a whole new world has been opened up to us!
@Michelle I am with afrihost, and as soon they offered uncapped I jumped on it.
I am on it for over 48 hours and I can report the following:
1) running speedtest.net a couple of times and yield a ping of 22ms and speed of 3.6Mbps
2) Afrihost is semi-shaped so after hours there is no issue, during normal hours Skype™ is running perfectly, but this app is more weak to jitter than actual bandwidth.
IRC protocol or port 6667 should be shaped. NNTP on the other hand will be! But many people are overriding that with a VPN
3) Afrihost has announced that are in a test phase and there is only a limited number of uncapped account available
4) P2P and its fair use will always a debatable term. Downloading 24/7 would be unfair dixi Afrihost
Things have changed I can still remember the 56k modem connecting noises.
Speed must come up, in order to have like in many European countries where a 28Mbps line will give you in one device Phone TV and NET.
The big event today (beside Gill Marcus giving us 50 more pips to breath) is Paypal. Personaly it means for me that I can have my place in Ballito rented out with a Paypal link to anybody in the world. My wish is like Marc’s; Mobile megs must come down. I have uncapped for R400, and still pay R499 for 2GB of mobile this is ridiculous!
It is clear that the network won’t drop the prices till after the world cup, all the foreigners hungry to get their mails :)
Thanks for the comments guys :)
Cool to see the FNB is as passionate about technology as we are. It’s going to be awesome to see how FNB takes this technology wave forward
You know all the detail is lost on me, but WOW!! This really is very exciting!!