Soweto gets Wimaxed

Soweto now has high speed Internet, well in some parts anyway. MWEB have been conducting WiMax trials around the country with Soweto being one of the earmarked areas. Intelligence (July issue) recently interviewed Rudi Jansen, CEO of MWEB, about the trials. According to Jansen MWEB is confident of being granted a full license in the near future.

"WiMAX is ideal for achieving rapid Internet installation in areas that were previously not catered for by fixed line operators, as WiMAX is not hindered by cable infrastructure. It is far easier and quicker to deploy a WiMAX network than a fixed line network. In addition, there is worldwide and local support for the technology which, in future, will drive costs down further as the uptake increases,” said Jansen in a recent company press release.

One of the big pull cards for WiMax is that it can provide access to areas where fixed line and WiFi cannot be accessed. The roll out of this technology has been seen as a possible bridge for the digital divide found in South Africa.

100 residents were connected within 7 days, an impressive set up time.

Online slow down

Internet uptake levels seem to be dropping in South Africa, according to a recent study carried out by World Wide Worx (WWW). The research predicts that growth for 2007 will sit at 3 percent, which, according to WWW, is the slowest annual rate witnessed so far. Looking at the predicted growth it seems that by the end of the year there will be 3.85 million connected citizens of South Africa, which equates to around 9 percent of the population.

“The harsh reality is that broadband has not yet made a major impact on overall connectivity numbers, even while dramatically increasing the usage of those who are already connected,” says Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of WWW. “The majority of broadband users are simply migrating up the connectivity food chain, from dial-up to broadband. So, while the haves get more, the have-nots remain locked out.”

According to the study iBurst is the only service offering that is attracting large numbers of Internet users, the ubiquitous dislike toward Telkom could be a big reason for this.

In the end it is all down to competition. The 3G offerings from MTN and Vodacom are starting to take a slice of the action and with the pending introduction of Neotel’s offering and the opening up of the SAT-3 cable the landscape could change. The problem is that this shift has been expected for some time now with no significant result.

IPTV in troubled waters

IPTV took centre stage at the latest First Tuesday event which was held this morning. The usual complaints of Telkom holding back IPTV were aired but this is nothing new really. Jonathan Newman, head of strategy at Multichoice, mentioned that by 2010 it is predicted that there will be 49 million IPTV subscribers globally, which will rake in an estimated $13 billion (R91 billion). Africa and the Middle East however are only predicted to gain 133 000 subscribers by then, only bringing in an estimated $3 million (R21 million) – the future does not seem too bright for our region.

An interesting point was brought up by a member of the audience who asked Newman if the business model of IPTV would actually work. The example the audience member gave focused on the fact that the subscribers will in effect be paying for advertising as this would eat up their bandwidth. There are not too many people out there who would be happy with this situation.

MySpace a haven for malicious code

It seems that MySpace is no longer a safe haven for social networking. According to Panda Labs there are several malicious codes out there that are using MySpace pages to spread.

”Cyber-crooks want to distribute their creations to as many users as possible. That’s why they use networks that attract millions of Internet users around the world to spread their creations,” explains Jeremy Matthews, CE of Panda Software South Africa.

According to Panda, the majority of these codes are Trojans. One in particular retrieves confidential information that has been saved on the computer.

Situations like these prove problematic for the boom in social networking sites. If the situation becomes too serious it could compromise the growth in these sites. On the other hand the same happened to e-mail and most people still use it.