Broadband over powerlines

I stumbled upon this new company in SA which is to supply PLC (Power Line Communication) called GTS. Oh, how exciting! Now we can give Telkom the finger, right? WRONG!!! One thing we must not forget is that Telkom controls whatever bandwidth goes out of this country. So Telkom will charge what Telkom charges. Whoever or whatever solution we choose, the money is going to end up in Telkom coffers one way or another.

Lets have a look at the costs for PLC. This is a price matrix on GTS’s website:

R500 for 5GB, no line rental or binding contracts. Not too bad, but neither is it earth shattering good. Speed is a bit shoddy considering that Telkom now offer 4 Mbps lines. My main concern is, is it not a case of “rather the devil you know than the one you don’t”. How stable will it be? There is little way of telling. Is it even for real? There has been little to no hype around it. Why? We are all so desperate to give Telkom the finger, one or two big advertising campaigns and they’d have more work than they can manage. Why then enter the market silently? It makes little sense. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled to see how this one pans out.

2 Comments to "Broadband over powerlines"

• Uno said: On 10/04/2007 at 8:51 am

  These guys have been saying this for the past 5 years or something. Do a search on My Broadband to see what the people have been saying.

• Stii said: On 10/04/2007 at 11:11 am

  Uno, they were recently making a small ripple in the pond, so there must be something happening.

Spit it out!

Filed in: South Africa, Techie stuff by: Stii