We, as South Africans, are seriously ripped off when it comes to internet connectivity. Our data speeds are substantially lower than most other countries in the world, and to have anything near a decent connection costs an arm and a leg, and then some.

Last month, it was announced that the Seacom cable connecting Africa to Europe was completed, and I nearly thought it was time to celebrate. Up to now, the total international bandwidth in South Africa was 120Gb/s, through the SAT-3 and SAFE cables. Now, the Seacom cable promises speeds of 1.3Tb/s. An unheard of boon for us.

My joy was short-lived however, and my hopes fading quickly. We are now caught in the middle of bad infrastructure and monopolistic telecoms companies. You see, Telkom, owns about 90-95% of the two current cables, and the national backbone, which means up to now, almost ALL internet access had to flow through them. they have contracts in place with the internet industry which forces them to use them, and thus the local internet industry is only able to use the new Seacom cable as a supplementary cable. At the moment, only 6.1%, or 80Gb/s of the cable is being used (or to use the technical term – is lit).

Our local infrastructure is also bad. The limit which our landlines lines can handle is 4Mb/s, and that is if you are close enough to an exchange which supports it. Our wifi networks are spotty at best. I suffer personally from this. I have a 3G connection supplied by Vodacom, which in theory promises me 3.8Mb/s. From my house, on the northern fringe of the Cape Town urban sprawl, there are only two spots in the house where I get anywhere even remotely close to a 3G connection, let alone 3.8Mb/s. Most times I have to limp along with a severely degraded GPRS connection which can barely load Google. And it is not like I am living in a rural village somewhere out in the middle of the Karoo.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. When those contracts start running out, then the internet industry will be able to start using the Seacom cable more, and there are a number of projects to upgrade the local infrastructure, so maybe one day, hopefully sometime in the reasonable future, we will be get fast, cheap internet…..until then, I will have to content myself with playing “hunt for the signal” while hacking off another limb to pay for my subscription.

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