[News] SA broadband Speed

[Mcshammer_dj]

Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Remind me never to complain about speed here in the UK

[ahuxham]

Telkom are owned by the government and as such have a huge monopoly over the whole market.

I used to get 512kbps broadband two years ago, cost around R700 (£70 for argument sake) a month, and have a 2GB International Cap, and no local domestic cap.

Internet in South Africa is very much in the dark ages, but that's what it costs when a country as developed as it is, is so far from the norm. South Africa relies on Satellites and Submarine cables to get data back across the world based on its geographic location, and leasing space on these costs, however telkom make at least 500% ROI

[AJT1]

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt