I CANNOT believe that this is the seventh year that I am writing the ClickKliek column.
It feels like only yesterday that I wrote the first one.
This year promises to be full of exciting advances in the technology space.
And according to some also the end of the world.
Connectivity will become more affordable in 2012 as South Africa is getting more undersea internet cables connecting our country to the rest of the world.
A while back prices dropped very quickly when a relatively small cable known as Seacom connected us to the rest of the world. Prices went down over night.
Since then other cables did go live, but due to financial reasons of large providers the prices were still kept high.
Some industry experts say that prices will not come down by more than about 10% to 20%, but I do believe that by the end of the year there will be significant price cuts.
The two main cables going active this year is the WACS and ACE submarine cables.
Important to also note is that these cables will provide the country with more international connectivity than we’ll know what to do with.
I am, however, worried that the internal infrastructure for both ADSL and 3G will not be able to handle this increased flow of data.
As the prices drop the demand will increase and this will put loads of pressure on the infrastructure of the current providers. With the increased supply and demand the infrastructure will need to be improved urgently.
Let us hope that 2012 will not only be a year that we all are able to connect with the world at an affordable rate, but also a year that the quality of infrastructure that provide the data to us also improves.