Back when I worked for I-Net Bridge/Johnnic e-Ventures before the dot-com bubble I had a little Sun IPC SPARCStation at my disposal. It was one of the first machines that ran SparcLinux in South Africa, since I pretty much did a lot of the porting work for the peripherals myself.

I felt that music and audio streaming was the NEXT BIG THING, because I was also a partner in TheFridge (a nightclub). I researched audio streaming technologies. I pimped the little IPC with extra hardrives, and ran Apache, and a selection of seriously nasty perl scripts that could stream music. This little box was called http://beer.inet.co.za/ and it served for many years as the development team’s general testgrounds and the company’s internal fungrounds. We even ran an internal mailing list, and nntp server on the thing.

Of course, after management discovered the thing I was forced to shut it down,  due to it’s popularity, and supposedly dubious content.  I guess they didn’t appreciate me recreating a bad.attitude newsgroup ala JWZ.

I had to move my fungrounds to the interwebs. I started a series of “musical education” pages on an external webserver, and tried to replicate the fun that was had on beer.inet.co.za but it was just never the same. In fact, my https://rodent.za.net/me/ pages got me more takedown notices in a month than a badger sheds hair in a day.

So, in the spirit of something I did years ago, and with the “litigation free” hosting services of youtube.com, I present some more awesome music, and “musical education” albeit 8 years later.

With the advent of Youtube, I can now simply rescind all responsibility for content since I’m not hosting any of this… Haha!

I link largely for the music, not the videos.  Hence the small video format. I’m sure you know how to make it bigger. Clicky Clicky, Hacky Hack. It’s not rocket science.

Covenant

Covenant is easily one of the most underrated electro bands. I’ve been a fan since I ran TheFridge. Covenant’s lyrics are appealling, thoughtful, and (most) of their music is the angry kind of calm that can only be compared to Depeche Mode.

“Bullet” had one of the best videos for it’s age. The Anton Corbijn style shots and matrix-like effects were simply awesome. Bullet is a thoughtful ballad executed with skill and balance.

“Go Film” was simply a clone of the beats and ideas behind Depeche Mode’s “Photographic” but it was certainly executed in style as only Covenant can do. “Go Film” was a dance floor hit at the club for many months. I remember girls coming up to me in the DJ booth asking for more of that “dancy depeche mode”.

Carter – The Unstoppable Sex Machine

Welcome to Punk, Brixton, and the great british cockup. Punk. Punk was the eighties, the tailend of the nineties and overall just great. Rebellion, reality, guitaring, anger and great lyrics all rolled into one. Carter “The Unstoppable Sex Machine” was one of the great theatrical punk-brit bands that ended the final season of punkhood.

The first video “Surfin USM” will put everything about Carter USM into perspective. It is from their live concert in Brixton. If you think you’ve seen people mosh about to pedestrian songs such as “Nelly the Elephant” and thought it wild, then you have not seen how insane “Surfin USM” becomes on a dance floor.

The famous intro:  “When you’re younger, you can eat what you like, drink what you like and still climb into your 26 inch waist trousers and zip them closed. When you reach that age, 24, 25,  your muscles give up, they wave a little white flag and without any warning at all you’re suddenly a fat bastard”. You fat bastard! You fat bastard!

Here’s the song continuing from the video:

Inspiral Carpets

“This is how it feels” – was covered by Carter the Unstoppable Sex machine. The Inspiral Carpets version is the best though… Just imagine driving down a long dark dirt road whilst on holiday in Stilbaai and shouting the lyrics at the top of your lungs.

This was one of the songs that expressed 400% of how I felt at the time, right after writing matric examinations, and fluxing in that space of “what the hell am I going to do now ?

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. 😉

— or —

“What happens when the owner of a web design company reckons he’s got what it takes to be an ISP?”

On the 12th of October, a new “ISP” called Social Flu Internet launched with great fanfare, and  got  great coverage on MyADSL, under the heading “ADSL: R 8 per GB local, R 35 per GB blended”

A lot of people, including the MyADSL editorial team considered this too good to be true. This is understandable, seeing that they offered local-only@R8/Gb, and shaped@R35/Gb, and unshaped@R45/GB, when the retail price from SAIX for unshaped bandwidth is still above R100/Gb (didn’t the ADSL regulations cover port prioritisation?)

As it turns out it was a scam perpetrated by Social Flu Media’s “Internet” division. Kudos to Rudolph Muller of MyADSL for asking the difficult questions, and doing the investigation.

Of course most people that  know just a smidgeon about the industry knew that things were just “not right”.

SAIX resale structures:

Apparently, Social Flu Internet was simply a reseller of another “upstream” company’s bandwidth. Put into perspective it simply means that SocialFlu signed up with someone like Datapro, Axxess, Web Africa, or the various ISP’s that have invested in RADIUS infrastructure, as a “reseller” and received their own realms based on the “upstream” company’s wholesale agreement with SAIX.

SAIX, will not allow a company to resell their bandwidth unless they are a registered VAN, or ECS holder. This has however, left a nice niche, where ECS/VANs license holders tend to sign up “resellers” under their overall wholesale agreement with Telkom/SAIX and allow the reseller to register their own “realms” under the auspices of the wholesaler. Of course, the ECS/VANs license holder is completely liable for all usage of the realms under it’s auspices.

Social Flu’s “upstream wholesaler” hadn’t billed them since 2005.  This is a practically inexcusable fault from the wholesaler, but fortunately only to their own demise.

The reality is, that if someone offers you SAIX bandwidth they are reselling SAIX bandwidth. And whining about whether Axxess, is better than Datapro, or MWeb, or @lantic is pointless. They’re all reselling the same thing. They’re reselling a username, and a password, and gettting charged the standard rate from SAIX.

Other than that, they have very little control. It’s like signing up for a Vodacom, MTN, or Cell-C cellular package through Nashua Mobile. You just hope that Nashua Mobile’s administration and support is better.

Fraud — “I perpetrate you”:

Social Flu’s owner — Enrico Rausa’s  behaviour,  after having cottoned on to the fact that his upstream isn’t charging him for services is simply tantamount to fraud. He launched SFI’s offerings at prices so low that he would NEVER be able to pay his “upstream” bill, but he simply depended on the lackadaisic billing from his upstream  to offer him some leverage in the market.

Honestly, I don’t know what he thought he would accomplish, or whether nothing would happen, but let’s face it… If someone in the DSL market offers pricing below what other ISP’s reselling Telkom/SAIX does then “difficult questions” are going to be asked.

As it turned out,  apparently his “upstreams” asked the difficult question, and decided to investigate their records. Lo and behold they came across a an account that hadn’t been charged from their billing system since 2005.

Enrico’s retort to MyADSL questions was: “We tried something, it backfired. Send me to the gallows if you want. It is time people took a stand against the big people.” is even more inexcusable.  It’s a bit thick there on the gallows thing..

According to him – he did nothing wrong, and what went wrong is that he got caught out. Naturally Afrihost’s recent R29/Gb marketing scheme assisted in people buying into the SFI’s marketing, since it really seemed possible that prices could be dropped, and everyone has been expecting it.

SAIX resale — the facts:

SAIX charges standard rates to everyone as resellers in the market. If someone offers you SAIX quality bandwidth below the well-known  cost prices of local-only@ R19/Gb, shaped@R49/Gb or unshaped@R119/Gb then you have to consider it to be dubious. If SAIX changes their wholesale price,  then most  SAIX resellers such as  Axxess, WebAfrica and MWeb’s prices will change.  Some of them appear to be “beter” in the market by selling below cost, but not by a big margin.

If a single SAIX resellers’ price changes, then so will everyone’s. Telkom will by lynched otherwise. So anything that you see in the market, in terms of pricing is simply the loss, or gain that the ISP is willing to make, based on the basic wholesale price. Some of them will be clever and will use statistics and modelling to make sure that their price point still allows them a profit based on the fact that most users don’t overrun their CAP.

The only companies that have some modicum of fixed  control over their base  costs, are companies that subscribe to SAIX/Telkom’s IPConnect service, which is charged per Mbps (speed), instead of per Gigabyte (volume). This is basically Internet Solutions, Verizon/MTN, FNB Connect, and recently WebAfrica.

This allows ISP’s  to terminate (in a very crippled fashion) their own ADSL sessions, and provide their own international and local bandwidth. However, with SAIX/Telkom’s prohibitive IPConnect pricing, there isn’t really much space to play with in terms of pricing either,  because even on IPConnect the base cost per Gig s are so much more than SAIX itsself has to pay. Yes. TelkomInternet  itsself doesn’t pay IPConnect fees. Every ISP does. Competition Commision investigation results are “imminent” 😉

The cunning ISP however, knows how to optimise this kind of infrastructure, even against the insane disadvantage of TelkomInternet, whilst still providing a good quality service. Social Flu wasn’t even close to this. In fact, it didn’t even reach the check-out counter of Checkers. Ok, maybe it did. But it didnt’ have change.

I don’t really know how people believed in their capability to innovate, or be the “killer in the market”. Believe you me — it is way more complicated than the ADSL forumites tend to make it out to be every day…

Afrihost R29/Gb – “The catalyst”?

The reality is that, yes, a catalyst such as Afrihost’s R29/Gb offering is certainly  stimulating competition. But when analyzing the fundamentals (of which I have a very firm grasp) anyone with half a brain will realize that some business models simply aren’t sustainable, and that, simply is why most ISP’s haven’t dropped their prices. Because in 99% of cases, their upstream (SAIX) hasn’t changed their prices.

SAIX is bargaining on the fact that for most ISP’s it will simply be easier and more economical to resell access on the SAIX network, that it would be to actually get their own AS Numbers, IP space, peering arrangements and international access.

Gian Visser of Afrihost has clearly done some good statistical analysis, and some risk analysis. Afrihost “might” make it, if their userbase is big enough after the R29/Gb marketing stunt to at least break even. That’s sustainable if you can keep the costs down.

One has to also consider the additional value-added service revenue Afrihost may have gained from a “mass signup” with such a good marketing campaign. Perhaps it might even be marginally profitable… Sustainable? I’m not so sure.

I have personally bought an Afrihost 5GB account, and have killed it within the first three days of every month. Actually, I triple-killed it three times, because Afrihost, and their upstream Internet Slowlutions didn’t realise that one of the two  SAIX POD (packet of disconnect) RADIUS servers was out of comission for nearly a week.

Afrihost is certainly not going to make any money out of me, and I doubt Gian Visser will — out of this whole “buyology” scheme — in the long run.

Afrihost’s upstream — Internet Solutions will always be on the winning side because they know how to manage bandwidth (ok, perhaps that’s giving them too much credit), and they have fixed costs in terms of connectivity and IPConnect. Afrihost will always be on the “low-margin” – “high-volume” end of the game.

The  moment Afrihost tries to do something else,  Internet Solutions will pull the proverbial “cunt” on them in terms of peering, local access, etc. Just as they have with every ISP smaller than them, that grew into a peer or “threat”.

MWeb’s TV advertisements attract the kind of customers who don’t overrun their CAP’s. Marketing on MyADSL in the other hand attracts every tom-dick-and-harry that will eat their bandwidth simply because they can.

I’m not so sure you’ll be able to keep your R29/Gb promises. Believe me  — the day you can’t I will be there to call you…

The social flu fallout:

As usual, there was lots of whining on MyADSL. Lessons were learnt. Probably not enough…

This is all similar in vein as the previous “free proxy server” fraud stuff I reported on.

I also predict that there is a  set of offices in The Colloseum, Century City, Cape Town to be evacuated  in the next few weeks as well. Some customers probably lost money. An “upstream provider” definately lost money.

They tainted my surname!

What pisses me off the most about the Social Flu saga is that my surname “Diedericks” is mentioned in the article: According to Social Flu Internet Marketing Manager Gareth Diedericks, he was shocked when he found out how the business was run.

“The calm attitude shown by Enrico after the scam report made me firmly believe that everything was above board. I am still amazed at how this turned out… I really thought that this was legit and even believed that I was going to become very wealthy,” said Diedericks.“Thank you to MyBroadband for bringing this to light. I dread to think what may have happened to me or my family should this not have been discovered and Social Flu grew.”

Get rich out of reselling SAIX bandwidth? What a dumbass marketing droid… The market is saturated. The room for maneuverability is nearly nil. It’s like trying to enter the market as Cell-D. Oh but wait. Gareth didn’t actually have a clue about what he was selling, or what it really was, or how it worked, or ANYTHING.

You clearly missed the  Diedericks gene-pool-meeting where we handed out brains and common sense.

Or perhaps it was just a simple way for Gareth to cop out of something he really knew was happening. Kudos for resigning. I hope you have better luck selling insurance policies or something.

A scrape-ing-of the silicon?

“If you can think it, we can create it!” says Social Flu Media’s contact page.

Uh, yeah. How’d that work out for you?

Of course, for me to mention that Enrico,  and Gareth come from Roggebaai/Century City in Cape Town (as per co.za and other sources) might be a bit insensitive, and biased considering my recent diatribe against Silicon Cape, but then again…

Without further ado here is Social Flu Internet/Media’s swansong:  DoosDronk!

“Party, party, party” Courtesy of “Die Antwoord”

Andrew Thomas-Woolf, was probably one of the few people whose comments about my “Sillycon Scrape” post hit the right strings with me. Thanks for engaging Andrew, and I have to say that your words has left some lingering thoughts.

I agree that the Cape and it’s lifestyle has much to offer, and that it definately has a great many attractions for “the right” people. I never disputed this. I like your Cape. I don’t necessarily like all the fscktards living in it.

What I disagree with Thomas about,  is that South Africa has too small a market to “attract” venture capital. Reason: You’re thinking about just South Africa!

The entire Silicon Cape initiative is  soooo South African focused.  Hello. We live on a continent.

It’s called Africa. I’ts fairly big.

Andrew said:

Our economy is just plain and simply too small. A 20% penetration rate on say 4 million Internet subscribers at R200 total lifetime value per customer == R160m or US$20m.

This is just such a typical  SillyconScrape way of looking at things. Certainly,  if you’re trying to build another Web2.0 company this is the case. The market is small.  But Information Technology is certainly not limited to Web2.0 startups and doing business in the global internet economy. Unfortunately, this is all that SiliconCape appears to care about.

Infrastructure is where IT’s at:

There are many opportunities in Africa in that does not align with the “Youtube/Facebook/Web2.0” sphere of Information Technology. Just because Social Media is currently the “big thing” on the internet, does not mean that Africa has the access to it, or the opportunity for business in it.

Africa needs IT infrastructure before it can enter the blogosweer.

And that is the venture capital problem that REALLY exists. Very few venture capitalists want to invest in infrastructure, because it’s not exciting enough or in their mind doesn’t “promise” enough return.

On the other hand funds earmarked for infrastructure all over Africa is being misapplied by the largely corrupt governments  in charge of said funding on initiatives that are too driven by hype and marketing than anything else !

Africa NEEDS basic infrastructure:

How are we ever going to eradicate the information poverty that exists within Africa ? What about telecommunications, data centers and the real nuts and bolts that makes IT work ? What about PCs for people? You need ROADS before you can have INDUSTRY. How are we going to address that poor “Internet penetration rate” ?

Perhaps if we focused on upping our “penetration rate” in South Africa, we’d have more venture capital. News24.co.za certainly seems to be able to profitably cater to a “very poorly penetrated” community. Ach, enough about sex then…

It appears that all the Silicon Cape is interested in, is in what the REST OF THE WORLD WANTS, and not what Africa NEEDS, because basic infrastructure like connectivity, computing facilities and the rest is simply not exciting enough for most people. “It’s droll”. It’s “plumbing”. I know a lot of rich plumbers though…

The opportunity I see, and have have a passion for is Africa. Not the “rest-of-world”. There are a great many opportunities north of the South African borders, yet unrealized and waiting to be picked. Opportunities that can make money, and on top if it make a difference.

Basic infrastructure DOES make money:

What Africa needs is virtual roads. Of course, that’s just simply not exciting enough for Venture Capital… However companies like Altech seem to be making a KILLING in this industry. Why ? Because they don’t take the short-term venture capitalists view. They know a lot about basic economics and ignore Seth Godin-like economics like the “long tail”. Even heavyweights like Dimension Data seems to have caught on to this fact.

My company is aligned with this African view. And I’ll tell you straight, it’s hard to do business “up there”.

We struggle on a daily basis to keep our customers happy, to understand contracts written in Arabic, French, and other languages. But the reality is that there is simply no better country, populous, or  skill-set better than South Africans geared to doing business in Africa. We understand the continent. We live on it. We breathe it.

Idealistically, basic infrastructure is  where I’d rather be involved. I was born African, and have a passion for remaining African. I certainly do not have a passion for becoming the next “Intellectual Property” export of South Africa. I have a passion for providing Internet services in Zanzibar, Lagos, Nairobi —  and for applying technology in a way that makes a difference to people.

I don’t even have a facebook account, because I consider it stupid. Facebook is not infrastructure. It’s the Internet  equivalent of an annoying tea-party with a bunch of people you’d rather call fuckwits.

It appears that the SillyconScrape  is more interested in wasting venture capitalists  money and enriching themselves. Because they can tote the success of Facebook, and others. Oh wait, perhaps that’s premature. Facebook isn’t actually profitable yet.

Conclusion:

I guess my problem  is that what I’ve seen about SillyconCape is that in  it’s entirety it simply misses the point of Africa, and focuses on the rest of the world and the global internet, when the reality of Information Technology on this content is abysmal.

I predict that the next company to make it “big” in this continent will be the company capable of doing business in Ki-Swahili.  MX-It in Ki-Swahili anyone?

My roadmap to success, is based north of our borders in this content, rather than across the Atlantic or Pacific.  Supplying Internet plumbing.

It’s a completely untapped market, and as MTN and others have shown, ready for the picking. Competition is low, revenues are high, and the ability to get entrenched is phenomenal.

I guess it just doesn’t fit with what SillyconScrape fanboys sees as “Information Technology”.

To end this post I could have quoted from Vinny’s presentation: “Yes We Can!” But that would have just been cliche, and  I don’t do that kind of crap.

Honestly, I’d rather just fall back to the great British morons:

“Let’s just get ON with it dear…”

I’ts lovely that some of our country’s useless politicians presided over a function to promote the Cape as “Silicon Cape”.

However, innovation and invention also happens here, in Johannesburg — “amazing doll!”.

I think in Joburg it’s just more the accepted norm than “something amazing”. Perhaps that’s why fancy banners aren’t slapped onto web2.0 businesses in an attempt to attract venture capital, because quite honestly every single investor I’ve talked to are looking at business fundamentals and not the badge.

From what I can see the soon-to-be-immolated-in-silicon-cape  has come up with  SynthaSite (ohwaitzors that’s called Yola now) (didn’t geocities try this and fail?) and a Fon-like  scheme trying to monetize Wi-Fi hotspots,  and an even grander scheme to reinvent Youtube in a bandwidth starved country.  I wish the initiative luck, and lots of mountain. Then again,  frogfoot do rock so there must be some brains in Cape Town. In fact, it must be so, because many of my previous colleagues have immigrated there…

Blogs, “Web 2.0” apps and the like was OFN in the year 2000 when the bubble burst. I really don’t see the reason for the excitement now. I had a web-2.0 style framework more complicated than prototype, jquery, mtools and and scriptaculous built for a web-based application delivering real-time data in 2004 already. Oh, and I had paying customers.

Why does every brand new MVC based framework out there still have a “blog” as the primary example of the efficacy of the framework? Is this what computing has driveled down to?  Blogs ?

Honestly — trying to flag a single city in South Africa as “silicon” just because a lot of people living in it tend to blog, and build RSS based aggregators does not mean that it invents stuff. RSS, XML feeds, content aggregation — it’s been done. All the Silicon Cape appears to be doing is refining it, and putting well-designed badges on it.

Call me sour. Call me whatever you want, but please don’t label the Cape as if it’s something new and fancy, or “the mother of invention”.

Try and build something innovative, that requires scaling, and challenge the problems before claiming that a city filled with developers is the new Silicon Valley. Do something really innovative. Like. Let’s say… Something that HASN’T been done before. Repeat it. Make it a success. Monetize it.

Politicians take note — if you want to incentivise innovation, technology and the overly-used term “ICT Development” how about giving technology companies a tax break, stop charging insane provisional taxes on profits not yet realized, and unbundle the local loop already… Perhaps then, successful businesses would want to put people into apprenticeships, and innovation and development could really happen. Perhaps — THEN, we could develop into an information society.

I have nothing against the Cape. Sounds like a marvelous lifestyle, and I certainly wouldn’t mind to live in Cape Town.

In my mind “SiliconSA” sounds a lot better…

Invention and innovation is a mindset —not a fucking geographical location.

—