Comments on naijablog: I'm singing the bandwidth blues...

Suburban seems to have save Nigeria the Internet c...

2009-08-15T20:00:03.084+01:00

Suburban seems to have save Nigeria the Internet challenge in the last one year. They have supplied over 2.5Gbps (going to 10Gbps) of Internet to Telcos and ISPs at cheaper prices but the Telcos and ISPs still exploit Nigerians without passing the cost saving across to customers. My company is lucky to have subscribed to Suburban directly and we enjoy the low latency, high speed broadband at cheaper cost.

Since Suburban came back from three weeks dead the...

2008-05-18T20:26:00.000+01:00

Since Suburban came back from three weeks dead their connection has become faster and reliable. Rumour in town is that they changed from expensive Intelsat to cost effective Skyvision.
Suburban also provide alternative to SAT3 in Lagos, gist in town is that big mobile/ISP operators are subscribing to their service in Lagos. When will they switch to SAT3 in Abuja? We are waiting Suburban.

i think the game of ISP and other services is abou...

2007-11-25T08:23:00.000+01:00

i think the game of ISP and other services is about to change...however don't know how soon, if it's gonna be this year or later...

Glo is laying their own undersea fiber optic cable from Lagos to London. Therefore they will not be dependent on the SAT3 anymore.

I hear that the ship is in Senegal right now, on its way to Lagos with drop points in the countries between.

When this one goes operational then prices will drop and service + speeds will increase dramatically

fellow nigerians,itz wit great hanour dat i presan...

2007-10-25T16:43:00.000+01:00

fellow nigerians,itz wit great hanour dat i presant 2 u d naija dream,insa allah , i have a dream.
i hv a dream dat one day fella nagerians, like meself can surf d net comfortably from our homes,skools offices and where ever.
I hv a dream, a dream whereby cybercafes will b a thing of the past......
i hv a dream where fast n affordable internet and cable tv wud become avialable to the masses n not only those within the v.g.c. vicinty.
Enough dreamin n back 2 reality,am sick,bored and tired of having to go to cybercafes to surf the web.i have no other choice since starcomms n reltel r all messed up.
I really want to know when it'll be possible to have fast,affordable internet access in this country.
I want to know when sat 3 will become operational?
i want to know why with some much fibre optic cables already laid in this country by glo n mtn,phone services r still so poor.
i want to know,honestly i want to know cos am tired of being nigerian since nothing nigerian works.
i also think we nigerians-internet users hv done nothing to adress this issue,we've sat back with our arms folded that's why nitel cud diss our senses wit the lack of use of sat 3.yes,with so musch potential,the sat 3 remains an unused $50 million dollars,gathering dust
when will glo 1 become operational?
i also think the yar ardua administration has done nothing to adress this situation.
plz somebaody out there give me a date when fast n affordable internat access wud bcome a reality.

and it's true what another guy mentioned above...N...

2007-10-14T08:40:00.000+01:00

and it's true what another guy mentioned above...NITEL has teamed up with some US/Euro (?) companies to develop their own ADSL.

They have 2x8gb bandwith from SAT3 and they hardly use any...

let's see

The most reliable ISP that i have found in Nigeria...

2007-10-14T08:33:00.000+01:00

The most reliable ISP that i have found in Nigeria-Lagos so far has been VGC. There must be the only ones that are using SAT3 as a backbone...but they are charging N25k per month for 128k/64k.

Many friends of mine have gone down the route of VSAT, evdo (still vsat) etc...but nothing comes close to SAT3 backbone...

I think VGC is running in Abuja when i looked at it...cause i was about to move up there

ALL YOU SUBURBAN HATER....... STOP CARRYING RUMORS...

2007-10-09T12:02:00.000+01:00

ALL YOU SUBURBAN HATER....... STOP CARRYING RUMORS..... SHUT UP.... AND FUCK U ALL......

My question is should west coast fibre project be ...

2007-09-20T16:24:00.000+01:00

My question is should west coast fibre project be completed. Will Nigerians run their portion of it properly and responsibly? If the comments on what other IPS are to go by, the answer is regrettably - no. I can see why the South Africans are wary of the whole thing.

This fibre project, apart from looking good on paper and to show that Nigerians can be progressive should they choose to follow that line. How will it benefit the masses? Is the government planning on seriously following the development model of a knowledge economy to boost employment? I think not, the political discourse there and in much of Africa (except South Africa), is wealth derived unsustainably by removing non-renewable resources as quickly as possible. Once they are exhausted, what then?

Rumour has it that suburban owe Intelsat (their ma...

2007-09-18T18:21:00.000+01:00

Rumour has it that suburban owe Intelsat (their main satellite provider) huge amounts of money and may be out of business soon. This may be the reason why you are currently unable to support your service.

Like Snazzy, I am also not optimistic about mainstreet technologies. However the rest of the explanation is not clear to me: You don't "lock in" ISP's when it comes to laying cables, you have to look for parties that can provide you with funding and landing rights into each country. it is manly large telcos that will invest in such ventures. The ISP's will then purchase capacity off the owners. It is also, in the main, down to the regulators in each country to allow operators landing rights.

The more cables that go into Africa the better as it will eventually lead to a reduction in cost. I fear however, that the 'glut' in capacity will be a long time coming to Africa. It is fortunate that SAT-3 was eventually completed but does anyone remember Africa 1? After all the years of talk it never happened http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/376016.stm EASSY - on the east coast - and many others are still being talked about but very little has happened.

The GLO-1 cable is being installed as I rwrite, it...

2007-09-18T12:48:00.000+01:00

The GLO-1 cable is being installed as I rwrite, it may be a while before it impacts the broadband situation in Nigeria but it will. Hang in there!

Jeremy the braodband situation in Nigeria wil be v...

2007-09-17T17:59:00.000+01:00

Jeremy the braodband situation in Nigeria wil be vastly different next year as compared to now. I can assure you that the main thing that was holding up the development of broadband was the fact that Nitel did not have the necessary funds to finance the activation of the SAT3 bandwidth required.

This is all changing due to something you might have missed in the news recently. Didata, Cisco and C&W have signed a contract with Transcorp to totally revamp the service and what will happen is that this consortuim will light up more fibre on SAT3 than has ever happened before. The more fibre that is lit the more that will be avialable to ISPs to sell on for their broadband services. At the moment you would not believe how little capacity is actually used on the SAT3 service that is available to Nigeriaofr broadband or other services.

So keep your chin up. You should start seeing things miving in the next three to six months.

Commenting via SUBURBAN!!!!! thankyouverymuch!! Be...

2007-09-17T17:36:00.000+01:00

Commenting via SUBURBAN!!!!! thankyouverymuch!! Been a hellish week. What did y'all hear was the prob? We heard NCC was forcing Nigerian service providers to comply with the rules in place by shutting down their (foreign )VSAT service providers. In despair we were about to get broadband service with ADSL technology.ADSL (Asymetrical Digital Subscriber Line) claims to give the same bandwidth as VSAT but at a much lower cost.I believe it works using fiberoptic cable. Only delay is that it only works with a Nitel (Transcorp) line(which true to its parent root takes a few days to install, if you dont have one) It is NOT the same thing as Nitel Internet dial up. AND its very fast..we used it at the new Asokoro Protea hotel. Might just go ahead and get still, as back up...
(Did my intro sound toomuch like gloating? Higher (Internet?) Power not letting me post...God does have a sense of humor!

yep internet in naij is a joke, and an expensive o...

2007-09-17T16:17:00.000+01:00

yep internet in naij is a joke, and an expensive one at that. I don't know if I'd be too optimistic about mainstreet technologies claims about funding and start dates. Also from what i hear it only makes financial sense if u are the first person to finish the damn cable, cos you lock in the ISPs the other person is left sucking air. Too many people were burnt in the fibre glut in the 90's to be willing to do it again, especially when it comes to Africa. Unless of course she's locked up all the important ISPs in each of the countries on her route. Otherwise... Anyway I suppose having Glo look over it's shoulder and not do the whole naija factor with the cable is good.