I have heard that SAIX *does* do settlement free peering (probably on the condition that you pay for half of the peering circuit) if they think they’re unlikely to be your upstream, and if the inbound/outbound traffic volumes are equal.

So, if by “unmentionables” you mean IS and MTN (MTNNS + Verizon SA), then I suspect they don’t buy transit from SAIX.

I do however agree that they’re been stupid, because if I’m right about this, it’s the smaller players who pay for SAIX transit, and by not peering with smaller players at JINX (or providing cheaper transit), the “unmentionables” are effectively giving the business to SAIX.

Regards,
Simeon.

Ask questions people!

It has taken a week, but, Colin/Roelf, please spend the time (if you can) watching the speeches on http://www.zoopy.com/siliconcape (you can avoid all the soundbyte videos), and you can judge for yourself.

I think what’s happened is that your experiences with a bunch of the people who have chosen to associate themselves with the whole SC drive have badly coloured your expectations of how people will behave and that you have extrapolated from this to all of the people involved.

I have definitively tried not to engage in ad hominem attacks. In fact, in one of my first posts to you I made clear that I *knew* of your intellect and ability and therefore thought I made clear that you personally and likewise people with the *ability* to deliver are valuable and necessary. (I worked in IT for several years and I expect that some of the people in your social circles would be able to give you a bit more info on my technology background – not sure if this would help?)

I’m very happy to engage on facts and continue this discussion and appreciate you taking the time to set out more of your views. Perhaps I should join with you and Justin Spratt at some point, given that I now live in Johannesburg? (And grew up in Port Elizabeth, by the way, so I’m not even a Capetonian by birth or current living place!)

I’m going to mail you privately and we can continue this discussion that way

Andrew

Your constant, borderline personal diatribe about not engaging my arguments is entirely transparent. Many others have done as you have, and I’ve been pointing at it each time. It’s the fundamental reason for my tone right from the start.

I could have been nice and constructive, I’m perfectly capable of that, but that wasn’t my goal. I’m very aware of the people involved in Silicon Cape and I know how they react to disagreement and criticism.

Here’s a fact, not all criticism and suggestions are wrapped in fur and tailored to your liking. Ultimately, the people in Silicon Cape will always cry “You’re just jealous” and allow personal mud slinging as a means to defend themselves. I’ve spent the better part of a decade watching it.

Unfortunately for you though, at the end of the day I represent many of the people capable of writing the code, and the nuts and bolts critical to almost any of the ideas that might be involved or relate to Silicon Cape. Best of luck achieving anything if you can’t convince people like me.

I guess I wasn’t entirely honest when I said “I don’t want your valley”. It’s more a case of “I don’t need your valley”.

You see, I don’t actually *have* to win anyone over or stroke their egos. I could replicate their ideas in an evening with a pot of coffee. You see what the people who don’t know programming don’t realise is that technical merit rewards usability, and usability is what gains users. Your users.

Caio.

If you had attended the event or followed up with the published speakers notes (front page of the SiliconCape website), you would know that the model that is currently most favoured for “localising” is *not* that of Silicon Valley, but in fact the Israeli VC model, which Laurie Olivier, one of the speakers, has watched and experienced from the ground up and watched Israel grow (with e.g. the Yozma programme) from a relative tech backwater in 1990 to a country with one of the highest per capita R&D in the world and which is now home to various research arms of IBM, HP, Intel, Cisco and others.

To requote for context:
“On the contrary, my point was exactly the same as yours: that people’s *THINKING* is too small.

This is the same point that both Vinny, Justin, Laurie and others made at the conference. People need to let go of this idea that some kind of localised version of a foreign service is the way to go.”

You seem to want to contradict some element of what I said by some form of reductio ad absurdum. The underlying assumption is that a replication of a business service and the replication of an enabling environment are identical, which they are not.

The creation of a business supplying a particular service is a choice. One can choose to enter or not enter a particular marketplace.

You cannot however choose not to have a regulatory environment within which to construct that business. It exists regardless of any particular business you seek to create. You cannot choose to “opt out” of having a regulatory environment in a country. Even “no regulation” is a regulatory regime.

We are thus compelled, in some way, to compete in an international market place for the attraction of people and capital. Our businesses will be helped or hindered in their international trade (exports, international expansion), our environment making it easier or more difficult to sell to foreign customers.

The only way we can choose not to compete in this way would be to go the way of North Korea: become entirely internally focused. Even then there would be positive and negative environmental issues affecting the internal development that takes place.

Your analogy is false, and further leads to the absurdity that learning from anyone else’s experiences where those people are not South African is
not to be valued.

Your comments are not constructive and I can see that you are not interested in entering into an actual discussion about any of the above. Although I will continue to respond to any statements that I see as misleading or factually incorrect, I will for the foreseeable future not be engaging further with you on this topic.

My argument is that people need to let go of this idea of some localised version of a foreign idea… like Silicon Valley… Oh wait…