The last time we pitted man (or sentient life form) against machine in a South African technology duel it was trusty ole Winston the Pigeon against Telkom’s ADSL line, and Winston won wings down.
This week it was a more hyped-up shoot-out.
To launch its new fibre-optic business connection, Vodacom brought the youngest Formula One world champion, Lewis Hamilton, to race around the Kyalami racetrack while 5.4GB of data was sent from Midrand to Sandton on Vodacom’s Metro ethernet service.
But it wasn’t a real duel, of course — it was a lavish marketing event at a time when South African networks are under constant criticism for excessively high call charges and bandwidth rates.
So when Vodacom Business managing executive of products and services Ermano Quartero was asked why Vodacom chose such an excessively extravagant way to launch this new service, he said that “we have to divorce the current negative sentiment in South Africa from the launch of the important, super-fast Metro E service”.
“An event like this will be good for the whole country,” he said.
“We’re offering a service that works at 65% the speed of light, and who better to put that service to the test than Lewis — we’re happy with what we’ve done here and we’d probably do it all over again if we had to,” said Quartero.
Fed-up with high internet and call charges
Before journalists could quiz him any further during the short press conference held at Kyalami, we were drowned out by other scribes firing away F1-related questions at Hamilton.
Hamilton raced around Kyalami in a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG, and his quickest lap time was two minutes, which is exactly the time it took for the data capsule to reach Sandton. However, given that Hamilton’s first two laps were more than two minutes, Vodacom says the Metro E line was technically the winner.
Metro E fibre offerings include IPConnect, which is a point-to-IP cloud service that uses the fibre for IP services such as virtual private networks and voice-over internet protocol, and LAN [local area network] Connect, which is a point-to-point service that is ideal for businesses wanting to connect their branch LANs together.
Tariffs for the Metro E service products have not yet been announced.
It goes without saying that it was a real treat to meet Hamilton and to watch him speed around Kyalami, though I couldn’t help but wonder if Vodacom — and indeed other cellular networks and internet service providers — is aware of how fed-up South Africans are over high internet and call charges, and bad service.
Yes, the new Metro E connection with a bandwidth of 1GBps is an important tool for big business, and when Vodacom extends these fibre-optic rings throughout South Africa, it will further reduce Telkom’s ability to continue monopolising the use of fibre-optic cables. But how is the average South African supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about this service when Vodacom, like other networks, does the bare minimum to address pertinent cost issues in South Africa right now?