South Africa goes digital with more international bandwidth

Hi world,

In my not so daily blog - I last wrote on the 3 April 2009 and it is now the 3 June 2009; what a coincidence - exactly two months later (wasn't planned). Time is something that has always fascinated me. I remember for tax in university there is a calculation that involves apportioning value by time using days. The lecturers expected us to calculate the difference in days down to the very day. I proved to the lecturer that it is possible for some students to be one or two days out depending on how they calculate days - "to be or not to be" the first and last day. I have also always wondered about in biblical times the world was created in 7 days and people lived to be 100 - was it really 7 days? I wonder if their metrics were the same.

Anyways.. I got carried away back to the topic. From an online business perspective in South Africa there are some very interesting events taking place. For some background, telecommunications in South Africa and probably the rest of Africa have been up until now very expensive. The internet penetration in the country is very low and I have read somewhere that we have one of the largest mobile phone internet users in the world. Regardless of what you earn, every South African has a mobile phone. Barring that one person may have two mobile contracts - the number of subscribers is larger than the population. It would seem that PCs and software are too expensive and the on going cost of a dial up or DSL line is also very expensive.

The only significant international bandwidth that is entering South Africa is the SAT-3 and basically one company provides wholesale international bandwidth to the rest of the country. The bandwidth is also not sufficient for modern day applications and creates a bottleneck of slow internet speeds. There is very little competition so as market forces have their way - the price of internet has been very steep to the expense of the rest of the economy. One could only dream of the amount of digital business such as call centres that haven't made their way to South Africa due to high telecommunication costs.

In mid June, the Seacom cable which runs down the east coast of Africa will be switched on. This new cable which Seacom boasts to be 10x the capacity of the SAT-3 is the first time that there will be some form of significant competition for international bandwidth.

What does this all mean? cheaper internet for both businesses and individuals means more traffic for Callupcontact.com Telephone Directory. I will be making an effort to move the business into many other countries around the world but as a South African, Callupcontact.com started in South Africa and so most of my users are from South Africa. Because South Africans will be surfing more and penetration of home internet will increase so should the traffic on most South African websites. I don't ever see, in the near future, the kind of numbers in the US, China, India, etc. as our population is just no where close. I am very keen to see the satistics of weekend use on the website. I think that weekend use compared to week use is an indicator of home internet penetration.

Till tomorrow or two months which ever comes first :)

Saul Frank
founder of Callupcontact.com

A new beginning

Hi world,

Let me introduce myself, my name is Saul Frank and here is my daily digital life. The thinking behind this blog is to tell the world about recent developments of my website www.callupcontact.com and my life that revolves these developments.

Basically, it is a tough, sometimes demoralizing but highly exciting job of maintaining my day job in a bank and my night job as an entrepreneur. This is meant to be a daily blog but I think it may not be as daily depending on how the day goes :).

So why the website? Before I worked at the bank and started my business, I worked in a few small businesses where we would receive a book of contacts. I got frustrated on looking up contacts all the time and wanted to develop a small business database that was quick and user friendly. Callupcontact became just that and more.

When I started, I thought this will be a simple task - well the black rings under my eyes have proven me wrong. Would I do it again? Hundreds of times over and I am still continuing this crazy lifestyle with a demanding day job, crazy night life, friends, family and a demanding website.

Till the next time...