Just to add some facts to your FUD. SAT3 is indeed an undersea cable that runs down the west coast of Africa but it is not "run by Telkom in South Africa". It was developed by a consortium from a number of different countries along the west coast of Africa and Telkom happened to be the company within South Africa (SA) that coughed up the money to have a landing point in SA (around USD70 million IIRC). While Telkom has had total control over access to SAT3 (with regards to SA consumers only) since it's inception, that monopoly will end on 01 Nov 2007 where upon access will be granted to other players in the broadband market at near cost rates. That said there are two other undersea cables in the works that will terminate in SA and local loop unbundling is scheduled to be complete by 2011. As it is more than 75% of the population (around 30+ million) have a cellular telephones (GSM services have been in place for over 14 years now). Both Neotel (a new fixed line competitor to Telkom) and Vodacom (the largest cellular network in SA) are both moving ahead with rolling out their own national fibre networks to compete with Telkom. GPRS, EDGE and 3G services have been available through the two largest cellular networks for a number of years now and more than one operator will be rolling out WiMax broadband within the next 6 months. So while I agree that South Africa's not currently a broadband meca (from a cost point of view) I believe it currently is and will continue to be a lot better off than most other African countries.
