We are a connected nation - despite the spectacular failure of the Government's policy of "managed liberalization".
For many years Telkom was allowed to starve South Africans of bandwidth. 1 Gb of capacity in South Africa costs about R 50.00, as opposed to about R 2.00 in the USA. The CITY of Luxemburg has about the same amount of internet capacity as the entire South African nation.
Insane.
And yet, despite this, in a population of about 49 million people, 42 million own cell phones.
I was reminded of this "connectedness" again while I was camping last weekend: I met a gentleman who mentioned offhandedly that his friend could not join us as he was searching for his cell phone and dentures. Apparently he lost them in the public swimming pool the previous night.
When one arranges the worlds "cell phone", "dentures" and "public swimming pool" in the same sentence, it is par for the course that "brandy and coke" and "gratuitous inebriation" are implied. Not that I am a stranger to idjit braais. On the contrary, but the funny thing was that no-one batted an eye about the story. Cell phones are more common than dentures - even in camp sites and public swimming pools.
Who could have predicted pot bellied, balding, topless guys with a brandy and coke in one hand, tongs in the other and dentures (mostly) in the mouth will have a cell phone stuck in the elastic of their black PT pants while discussing the Bulls vs. the Sharks and lovingly turning the wors?
The image seems to be the antithesis of technology and yet it is not. Communications technology is so interlinked with our everyday lives, we swim (and drink) with it.
The internet too is about to become as integrated into our lives as cell phones already are. In fact, cell phones will loose significance in all ways other than the fact that it is a method to link to the internet. A Tsunami of abundant and cheap bandwidth is about to hit our shores...and it will change the way we use the internet - just as sure as cell phones and dentures don't float.
Africa (and specifically South Africa) is currently connected the the rest of the world via the SAT3/SAFE cable systems running up the west coast of Africa to land in Portugal and Spain and east directly to India and Malaysia. The cable has a capacity of 120 Gbit/s west and 130Gbit/s east.
It replaces the SAT2 cable commissioned in 1993 which has 0.5 Gb capacity.
To make "capacity" easier to understand: "capacity" means the amount of data that can be transmitted in a given time (speed or bandwidth) - typically measured as Gigabits per second. To give you an idea of relative speeds - to download a 4Gb DVD movie over the SAT2 cable would take about 64 seconds.
To download that same DVD via the SAT3 cable would take about 0.26 seconds or you could download approximately 4 DVDs every second.
In Jun/July 2009 the new SEACOM cable is expected to give live - connecting at 1 310 Gbit/s. It will download your DVD in 0.024 seconds....faster than you can blink your eye. In fact, you can download 40 complete DVDs every second.
By early 2010, WACS (West Africa Cable System) will run from Cape Town to the UK and touch land in several African countries in between. Capacity is expected to be around 3 891 Gbit/s. That is about 122 DVDs per second.
Then comes EASSY toward the end of 2010 with another 1 310 Gbit/s capacity - in theory. Political wrangling amongst the member countries and Telkom (a major stakeholder) have delayed implementation by at least a year.
So, from a current international capacity of 120 Gbit/s on the SAT3 cable, we will upgrade to a total of 6 631 by end 2010 - if all current projects complete. That is a 55 times more international bandwidth than we have now...enough to download 207 DVDs per second...or transmit about 140 000 digital TV channels at the same time.
On a national level, local companies are spending 1.4 billion rand to build a 5 000km fibre optic network in South Africa - independent of the Telkom infrastructure - to be ready for the 2010 soccer world cup.
All new long distance cables are "fibre optic". They contain very thin strands of a special glass fibre which conducts light instead of electricity as were the case in conventional cable systems. The really cool thing about the new cables are that they do not suffer from the same physical limitations as electrical cables:
You can only jam so much electricity into an electric cable before it melts. Problems like resistance, interference and capacitance severely limit the capacity of these cables. Not to mention the fact that, in South Africa, no multi million rand copper cable is a match for our nocturnal informal copper recycling entrepreneurs.
Not so with fiber cables: Since fiber cables work on light pulses (immune to electrical problems) the cables can be upgraded to faster speeds several times before they become saturated. This means that the cables being installed today, will serve us for many years to come and that the bandwidth being added to South Africa today, will be here long after the world cup is done. (These cables yield plastic (or glass) when burnt and are therefore not "recyclable")
I wonder how a South Africa would look where 42 million people have cheap and fast internet access via their cell phones?
Friday, April 17, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Time is a weird thing. A tie-your-brain-into-knots thing. Incomprehensible.
Take this "now": You are reading this for the first time. That "now".
N o w.
This now will he will be forever gone - after you read this sentence.
Poof! That's it - gone.
We are now in another (next), now. You can never, ever, in all eternity, read the previous paragraphs again for the first time. You can read the next paragraph for the first time to repeat the experiment (in the future), but the past is gone.
Feel those seconds tick by? Tick - Gone. Tock - Gone. Tick - Gone.
The present flowing into the past like a huge, silent, unstoppable river - oblivious to our presence.
We can't change the past or exert any influence on it whatsoever. It's gone - like Elvis, sideburns and drive ins.
We can ONLY act in the present.
Not in the past and not in the future. Only now.
Then there is the future: The actions we take in the now determine what the future holds for us. Life is a really, really big and a really, really complicated system - so although unexpected things happen, we mostly shape our own futures - by our own actions.
Hey, if you knew the garage Microsoft in 1979 would be THE Microsoft it is today, I guess you would have looked up ol'e William and offered him a limb (or two) in exchange for a percent or two of his company, right? If you could and you did, you'd be hilariously rich, swinging in a hammock on a tropical island being fed peeled grapes...not here reading this silly blog.
A little advance insider knowledge is a good thing - as long as you are the only person that has it. I mean, if everyone knew about Microsoft back then, then ol'e Bill would have been less keen to trade a percentage or two of the company, not so?
Worse, if you (and I) were the only people who did NOT know, we'd be in a spot of bother, wouldn't we? We'd be the village idiots, right? They'd tell jokes about us for years.
Therein lies the crux: Exclusive access to scarce information can be a huge advantage if used to determine your future; BUT: ignorance of public information makes you the bud of life's joke. And disagreeably poor.
Knowing the future and not acting? Well, gentle reader, that's just weapons grade stupid.
I don't have a hot tip for this weekend's lotto (aka tax on the mathematically impaired), but I do know a few things that will have an impact on your business life for the next year or so.
My business is helping other businesses use the Internet, so it's natural that my focus would be on the Internet. You might think that the Internet does not (yet) directly touch you or your business, but you'd be dead wrong. It's like saying that because you are not in the power generation industry electricity does not matter to your business.
The Internet is the electricity of the 21st century. It touches e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
Remember: time is a funny thing. You can't change the past and you can only shape the future in this now.
What I am about to tell you is common knowledge. You have to apply the common sense.
Here is what is headed your way:
1) The 2010 FIFA world cup is coming to South Africa next year. Billions op people around the world will hear about South Africa. Hundreds of millions of those will look for information about South Africa. A million or two visitors will come here to look for accommodation, entertainment, information, services and products.
2) New undersea Internet cables will start going live in June 2009, multiplying the international bandwidth South Africans have access to and drastically reducing the cost. Millions of South Africans and thousands of businesses will get on the Internet for the first time. (If some miscreant with a snorkel doesn't try to steal the cable.)
3) Major new national networks are being built between the major South African cities and will come online before the end of the year - to make the South African Internet faster and cheaper than ever before.
4) All new cell phones will have web browsers within the next 2 years and cellular data charges will be as little as cents per MB - making millions of cell phone users instantly able to use email and (well designed) web sites.
You probably know all these things.
Big, huge events. You probably think it's way above your head. In another league.
It depends. Would you have bought Microsoft shares in 1979?
Did you carefully consider how these imminent events can benefit your business or your career?
Are you acting on your advance knowledge?
N o w.
This now will he will be forever gone - after you read this sentence.
Poof! That's it - gone.
We are now in another (next), now. You can never, ever, in all eternity, read the previous paragraphs again for the first time. You can read the next paragraph for the first time to repeat the experiment (in the future), but the past is gone.
Feel those seconds tick by? Tick - Gone. Tock - Gone. Tick - Gone.
The present flowing into the past like a huge, silent, unstoppable river - oblivious to our presence.
We can't change the past or exert any influence on it whatsoever. It's gone - like Elvis, sideburns and drive ins.
We can ONLY act in the present.
Not in the past and not in the future. Only now.
Then there is the future: The actions we take in the now determine what the future holds for us. Life is a really, really big and a really, really complicated system - so although unexpected things happen, we mostly shape our own futures - by our own actions.
Hey, if you knew the garage Microsoft in 1979 would be THE Microsoft it is today, I guess you would have looked up ol'e William and offered him a limb (or two) in exchange for a percent or two of his company, right? If you could and you did, you'd be hilariously rich, swinging in a hammock on a tropical island being fed peeled grapes...not here reading this silly blog.
A little advance insider knowledge is a good thing - as long as you are the only person that has it. I mean, if everyone knew about Microsoft back then, then ol'e Bill would have been less keen to trade a percentage or two of the company, not so?
Worse, if you (and I) were the only people who did NOT know, we'd be in a spot of bother, wouldn't we? We'd be the village idiots, right? They'd tell jokes about us for years.
Therein lies the crux: Exclusive access to scarce information can be a huge advantage if used to determine your future; BUT: ignorance of public information makes you the bud of life's joke. And disagreeably poor.
Knowing the future and not acting? Well, gentle reader, that's just weapons grade stupid.
I don't have a hot tip for this weekend's lotto (aka tax on the mathematically impaired), but I do know a few things that will have an impact on your business life for the next year or so.
My business is helping other businesses use the Internet, so it's natural that my focus would be on the Internet. You might think that the Internet does not (yet) directly touch you or your business, but you'd be dead wrong. It's like saying that because you are not in the power generation industry electricity does not matter to your business.
The Internet is the electricity of the 21st century. It touches e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.
Remember: time is a funny thing. You can't change the past and you can only shape the future in this now.
What I am about to tell you is common knowledge. You have to apply the common sense.
Here is what is headed your way:
1) The 2010 FIFA world cup is coming to South Africa next year. Billions op people around the world will hear about South Africa. Hundreds of millions of those will look for information about South Africa. A million or two visitors will come here to look for accommodation, entertainment, information, services and products.
2) New undersea Internet cables will start going live in June 2009, multiplying the international bandwidth South Africans have access to and drastically reducing the cost. Millions of South Africans and thousands of businesses will get on the Internet for the first time. (If some miscreant with a snorkel doesn't try to steal the cable.)
3) Major new national networks are being built between the major South African cities and will come online before the end of the year - to make the South African Internet faster and cheaper than ever before.
4) All new cell phones will have web browsers within the next 2 years and cellular data charges will be as little as cents per MB - making millions of cell phone users instantly able to use email and (well designed) web sites.
You probably know all these things.
Big, huge events. You probably think it's way above your head. In another league.
It depends. Would you have bought Microsoft shares in 1979?
Did you carefully consider how these imminent events can benefit your business or your career?
Are you acting on your advance knowledge?
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