Still in Pursuit of the Fast Lane - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 11

Table 6. The 3CC Framework

Factors Drivers of Growth Inhibitors of Growth

Since introducing its ADSL service, Telkom has
reduced subscription rates on a number of occa-
sions between 2005 and 2007. The company has also
increased the value proposition by upgrading (free of
charge) 192kbps customers to 384kbps and upgrading
1Mbps customers to a 4Mbps line speed. Mobile pro-
viders have decreased their per megabyte data rates
from R 25.00 in 2006 to a mere R 2.00 at the time of
writing. Per megabyte rates within large data bundles
have been reduced phenomenally further.

South Africa's broadband providers (particularly those
offering fixed-line services) are constantly lambasted
for high tariffs. As per the 2007 Africa Competitiveness
Report (World Economic Forum, 2007), South Africa's
relative broadband value was ranked behind countries
such as Morocco, Egypt, Madagascar, Senegal, Bo-
tswana and Mauritius.

Costs

Telkom has realised the potential of data revenue and
is rapidly equipping its telephone exchanges to ac-
commodate ADSL lines. The phenomenal growth of
subscribers between 2004 and 2009 bears testimony
to this policy. The two leading cellular networks
are competing, head-to-head, to acquire the more
lucrative business customers who require advanced
services such as mobile broadband access. For this
reason, both 3G/HSDPA mobile broadband provides
have ubiquitous coverage of CBD areas and many
suburban areas. The networks have recently been
upgraded to 3.6Mbps and can even reach a through-
put of 7.2Mbps in some parts. This has resulted in the
performance of mobile broadband actually outshining
the performance of fixed-line broadband. Newcom-
ers iBurst and Neotel, both fixed-wireless broadband
providers, are also engaging in extensive network
expansion which presently includes all major cities
and most large towns in the country.

Broadband coverage outside metropolitan areas in South
Africa is virtually non-existent. Copper theft in rural
and peri-urban areas is rife, therefore limiting rollout of
fixed-line broadband services in these regions. Further-
more, the demand for 3G/HSDPA mobile broadband
services is limited to urban and peri-urban areas and
the operators have therefore focused on increasing
capacity in these areas at the expense of expanding such
networks countrywide. The state's signal broadcaster,
Sentech (the previous operator of MyWireless services),
has now been tasked with establishing broadband
infrastructure in rural areas as a government sponsored
initiative.

Coverage

Internet access is beginning to reach the “man in the
street”. In part, this is due to computer education in
the workplace, as well as in the primary, secondary
and/or tertiary education environment. A number
of companies and non-profit organisations, includ-
ing the Internet Service Providers Association and
Telkom Foundation, have been proactive in donating
hardware and software to educational institutions and
providing training to educators so that they can impart
these skills to their students.

Broadband appears to be an unknown quantity for many
South Africans, the vast majority of whom aren't com-
puter literate and are unlikely to have ever accessed the
Internet before. There are estimated to be between five
and ten million Personal Computers and laptops in the
home (as suggested by Laschinger & Goldstuck, 2006),
predominantly in formal settlements such as suburban
areas. Many consumers in informal settlements (i.e.
township areas) have therefore had no exposure to the
Internet of any sort.

Competence

'protocol shaping', it should be understood that
most consumer broadband accounts are 'con-
tended'. This means that a 512 kbps connection,
for example, isn't guaranteed the full line speed
at all times. Instead, a number of users essentially
share the same Internet pipeline, meaning that
if all users are concurrently online, each user is
likely to achieve a mere fraction of the theoreti-
cal throughput. Protocol shaping takes this a step
further. The principle here is that certain applica-
tions should be given more than their equitable
share of bandwidth, whilst others should be

given less than their fair share. In this manner,
certain applications are given low priority and
thus their use is discouraged. For example, if
the network detects that the user is transferring
files through a peer-to-peer application such as
Limewire, Kazaa or BitTorrent, his/her perfor-
mance is likely to be intentionally degraded and
thus bandwidth removed from the connection and
donated to other 'network-friendly' applications
such as general web browsing. Another example
is mobile broadband providers downgrading the
Voice over Internet Protocol to protect their voice