All along the Watchtower…

Bear McCreary’s version of “All along the Watchtower” in the finale of Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is simply awesome. I have the albums. All of it. If ever there was a Scifi series with a perfect soundtrack – BSG was it.

If you have know idea what I’m ranting about at this late hour, then it’s probably the time to get educated on the original Bob Dylan version of the song too.

I apologize for the pointless youtube embedding just for delivering some audio, but apparently google gets away with more rights violations than I could. There is a point to my rambling…

Firstly — the Bear McCreary/Bt42 version:

Then — Bob Dylan version, overlayed into the closing of Season 3 of BSG.

If you don’t know what BattleStar Galactica is, then well… Let’s just leave it there.

So what’s this got to do with “All along the watchtower” ?

At the end of the day, I got to this point by contemplating what is happening with the Mobile Interconnect Rate, and ICASA, and government. I stumbled across the song, during a random trawl of my media collection, and felt that it was quite applicable to the current happenings in terms of regulation in telecoms.

Bob Dylan is a great balladeer, and the whole point of “All along the watchtower” is that it is in essence, a reverse, recursive song. “At the conclusion of the last verse, it is as if the song bizarrely begins at last, and as if the myth began again.”

We have been here before:

When ICASA drafted their hare-brained ADSL regulations in 2006, everyone thought it would be great, and broadband in South Africa would be on the upswing. Little did we know. The regulations simply indicated that ICASA has a near zero understanding of any subject matter on their plate. The nett result for ADSL subscribers have been an even more racketeered DSL and bandwidth market. Telkom still has a stranglehold over the local loop. Telkom has found nifty ways around regulations such as “Local bandwidth usage shall not be subject to the cap”.

More fail predicted:

ICASA has been hopelessly unsuccessful in regulating the tiny bit of legislation they have control over. The DoC has been a complete basket case for the last 10 years.

Now suddenly there is a hive of activity? Politicians are showing their teeth. The operators are running scared (there’s a 19% ‘negotiated’ drop!)

ICASA is still trying to fight their way out of the paper bag they created. I predict that any and all regulation around the Mobile Interconnect Rate will be as pointless and ineffective as the ADSL regulations were. This is simply due to the fact that ICASA,  and it’s councilors have simply no idea of the subject matter.

We are the union, and the watchers:

The bottom line is — who is watching the watchers ? They are clearly incapable of doing so themselves.

MyADSL, the consumer, and every disillusioned internet user has become the watchdog. The consumers are the watchers. And they’re not turning to malformed regulation anymore. They’re just publicising their frustrations on the internet. I believe that activism and opinion has done more for the broadband market than any well-intended governement regulation.

A marketing manager’s nightmare.

Well done all. 😉

Author: roelf on October 28, 2009
Category: Uncategorized

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