Telkom WiMax set to shake up MTN and Vodacom

One of Telkom's biggest challenges (besides not being able to spell customer service), has been its ability to quickly rollout its over priced DSL offerings. The introduction of WiMax onto their network will mean that they can tie down more consumers quicker. My understanding is that with a wireless last mile, they can bypass the challenges they've had in the past and continue on their land grab strategy. However, by locking you down to a long contract, they will be putting more pressure on the mobile operators (who's margins are already stretched to the max) and Telkom will be able to slip back into its usual role...milking us for as long as they can, by offering something that's just a bit better than what anyone else can offer. We know how this model goes, prices move sideways, new/better services trickle in and the SA's dismal Broadband adoption stats continue.

"Fair access to Broadband"...tell us another one.
Telkom also previously said its WiMax network would provide “fair” access to broadband. However, it has refused to define what is meant by “fair”, or how its WiMax offering will be priced opposite its ADSL product.

Traffic in Jozi: A choice you make, says iBuzz

I had read about the iBuzz on IT Web and had contacted the good people at Imperial Fleet Services to see if they would be interested in taking a group of SA's finest Tech press up to Sin City (Sun City) for Cisco’s Networkers conference. I was soon in touch with Muller Pretorius, the innovative entrepreneur behind this pimped 21-seater, LCD screened mobile hub. When this oke says his bus is connected', people in the South run scared...

So there we were…
On the road to Cisco's Networkers Conference in Sin City (Sun City?). Over a 1000 tech heads getting together to talk about IP and how it’s making things happen. Everything from voice, video and data all running over one ding, the Intelligent Information Network. One day, even the bog in your reception will be online and reduced to just another app on the network, centrally flushed and invariably scented from your organisation’s head office (all in line with the corporate brand you know, one company – one stink).

We are heading through for Marthin de Beer’s keynote session and hopefully I’ll send through a clip later, talking about his views on how Web 2.0 is redefining how companies engage with consumers (and importantly vice versa) and generally do business. Knowing this event, I’m sure I’ll bump into the oke who invented VoIP and he’ll show me how to load video up here.

Looks like the iBuzz will get us there on time and connected. Everyone’s been hacking away the whole time onboard. With entrepreneurs like Muller always asking how tech can best help us to solve everyday problems like traffic, SA’s economy is well placed to compete globally and our ‘knowledge workers’ will always have access to info on the go. It’s all about being productive whilst in traffic (err… not one’s ability to eye the cherrie next to you on the N1, whilst taking their number and still having high hopes of arriving alive).

This post was brought to you, live and on the road, by the iBuzz. Great concept, amazing service and I'm sure you'll be seeing an iBuzz cruising next to you soon.

Tech help forum, web 2.0 styles

Fixya (Beta)

I'm having problems getting a Maxtor (they were bought out by Seagate) drive to recognise an HP printer, so I can share the printer over a home network. When searching on Google for HP's/Maxtor's trouble shooting forum, I came across this clever site. Above is my post and the race is on to see if web2.0 can beat the response time of the traditional route.

Credit to Seagate's site, it has all the relevant support for the Maxtor products.

Taken from the site (about).

2.5-million 'Broadband' connections in SA by 2010

Sad.

Government continues to stall its 5 year plan/strategy on Broadband. It's being redrafted by an independent panel, so that it can be reviewed by a committee of peers, before being submitted to an open industry-wide forum where comments from various stakeholders will have the right to peruse suggestions, before it is needed to be actioned on and implemented by Government. At the rate of technological development, SA's Broadband strategy will be irrelevant by the time it sees the light of day.

How will Africa compete as a continent (never mind SA) if this persists?

Telkom Media debuts IPTV

I pulled this article off today's IT Online.

It doesn't tell us anything new really, but it does lead us to believe that Telkom is excitingly close (aka 12 Telkom months - that's 2 calendar years for you and me -) to bringing something to market.

For this to be any sort of large scale deployment and if they want to stand a real chance of encouraging trial usage and switching, they might decide to shake up the market and bump up their entry-level Broadband offering. I referred to this as wishful thinking in an earlier post, but given the drop in prices from the mobile operators, there should be something in the pipeline from the sleeping giants (even though they played this suggestion down in an IT Web story).

Joost is jammer

The text on the screen shot here reads: For some reason, we can't show you the program right now. Sorry about that -Check out another programme or try a bit later.

This probably isn't working for a number of reasons (my kak bandwidth comes to mind).

After having some trouble logging on (eventually set up a new user name), I clicked through and was greeted by a simple looking and easy to use interface. After a few clicks, I had browsed the limited available content (similar to the old music catalougues the record labels are sitting on -Amor's first CD must be there somewhere -) and decided that caged fighting was the way to go. Before the first mock punch could be thrown and after a few seconds of pixelated image, my first Joost experience was all but over and I was slapped with the parting shot above.

Perhaps this remains the biggest challenge for any product looking to take consumers away from the offline TV screen. That challenge is one of providing a service that just works and Web TV/IPTV needs to work like any other basic utility in the house. Turn on tap and you get warm TV. Flick switch and get Hollywood premier.

It's going to take a lot of work to get Joost running smoothly and who will you call when the screen shot above pops up? A call centre agent in the Philippines?

I'm still all for what Joost is trying to do, but it still remains to be seen who will own the end customer. Simpliity, price, content and functionality are key factors and Joost as a concept scores highlyon all of these. In terms of getting adoption up and getting consumers to switch from the traditional box, the issue of being a trusted brand comes intoplay. Joost is a non-entity.

The fight is on to own the living room.
Will it be a telco with an IPTV offering (like BT in the UK and Telkom Media is trying to do), a Joost/YouTube type, Apple TV, gaming console (PS4), digital set-top box crowd (like Cisco's Scientific Atlanta box in the US; could see DSTV going this way locally), the PC with MS Media Centre or will it be the content owners themselves who float downstream, bypassing their existing channel and buy out the IP from the likes of Joost to offer content direct and take a bigger slice of the margin pie? Then there's the issue of having all this content on the road and what device that will be. My question is who wants video on the road anyway, if you have to watch it on a small mobile phone screen/PSP?

Nough said. I'll try Joost again when Telkom does its next round of upgrades and pushes everyone on their entry level DSL to a 1MB connection (wishful thinking).

Here's a thought, perhaps we can all get together and pool our bandwidth and watch the first 30 mins of any decent content they make available.

I'm very keen to learn about similar/contrasting experiences with Joost and how you think the media/entertainment landscape will pan out.

Joost en Amor

Apologies for anyone who was hoping to get the latest Heat magazine scoop on Amor en Joost's se love life....

Just finished downloading the Beta version of Joost. I'm about to start fiddling and see what the makers of Skype have up their sleeves. I've had some good discussions with friends about how things might pan out for the movie industry, but if Skype's impact on the telco voice business is anything to go by, perhaps people will sit up and take Joost a bit more seriously. Let's hope it lives up to the hype. What ever it is, it seems I only have 10 hours to play with before it blows my 1MB cap...

Let's hope this is another step in the right direction of giving consumers access to premiers and premium content as it is launched in its home market. If you allow folks to watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, your half way to having a successful business model (or at least optimising one that's been in need of a kick in a$$ for some time). At the end of the day, the fat salaries and lucrative margins in the movie industry won't disappear. No one in the channel will make any drastic moves that will cannibalise any downstream revenues. But, from the reports in the media, it sounds like the movie industry is a bit more online when it comes to embracing the what the web can offer. In principle, its a platform to get more of your product, to more consumers, faster, off a lower cost base. This will start to shake things up eventually, even if a large media company just buys the software and turns it into some back-end engine, so that the usual suspects can keep owning the customer on the front end.

I purposefully wrote this as an outsider looking in, before I opened the app for the first time. I'm interested to see how perceptions will change in time.
Later