So finally South Africa is treated to the bright, amazing, and wondrous release of the Applie iPhone 3G (totally missing out on Version 1), that’s unless you had a cousin, connection or friend in another “more developed” country smuggle one in for you. I would have been there on the launch day (I like the vibe of launch days) but I was quad biking in the bushveld (sun, wild animals, 4×4 lots of fun and first holiday in a long time).
Here is the laugh though; since the launch (a week ago today) I have seen 1 (total) being used (at a Fortinet mixer last night). I have decided against being a South African first adopter becuase of articels like this and this and don’t want to be find out first hand how bad Vodacom support can be on a new product.
I stopped into a Voda-store (local reseller) to have a listen to the whole story on a “Apple package deal” and was thoroughly disgusted as they wanted me to sign “another contract” on top of the one I already have. I had to ask three times specifically NO CONTRACT ONLY HANDSET before I was told that the Voda-super-store was the only place that sold iPhone out-of-hand for the super price of ZAR 7,569. These sharks don’t tell you when you ask, or listen when you ask and con people into signing contracts for 24 months onto existing 24 month contracts. Totally Disgusting this being one of their resellers and how they operate. Probably why Vodacom South Africa has a Net Profit of ZAR 8 Bn and Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amortisation, impairment, profit/loss on disposal of property, plant and equipment, investment properties, intangible assets and investments of ZAR 16.5 Bn.
Today on MyBroadband they had a nice piece on the cost of the iPhone in other markets versus here.
Anyone want that iPhone 3G with added Apple Tax all things considered? Seems a little much for me taking into consideration what it says on the box isn’t what the product seems to be doing all over the world.
The Ooh factor in Cisco Telepresence
UPDATED: Got sent some WOW stats!!
For those of us that visit Cisco.com fairly often this video clip (below) will be something that you may have seen before (it was featured a while back on the page). I really love this video clip simply because I lol’ed (laughed out loud) when I saw it the first time. I thought about the clip again after reading this from mybroadband and neither the video nor the article does this Cisco solution justice simply because until I was physically shown this solution at the Cisco offices I couldn’t quite grasp “how” Cisco imagined it was going to “cut back travel” costs with Collaborative Technologies.
So JP sent me some stats on Cisco Telepresence this morning. This is some WOW stats; in December 2007 Cisco announced 100 customer deployments in over 40 countries; companies like Verizon, BT, Procter & Gamble, SAP, and even in government (Xiamen Municipal Government).
The stats (9th June 2008) for the use of Telepresence in Cisco look like this; 229 Cisco Telepresence units in 108 Cities globally deployed in Cisco Systems. The overall average utilization of these units lie at about 45% as compared to <1% for video conferencing.
The units are spread globally as follows US/Canada has 145, APAC / Japan has 38, Europe has 38, and Emerging Markets has 8 units. The deployments are mixed CTS 3000/3200/1000 depending on the theatre.
Of these units 110,627 Teleprecence meetings has been scheduled to date at a total of 141,565 hours (average of 75 minutes per meeting) with 2,576 meetings a week in the past 30 days (May 2008). This technology is not only for in-house use as there has been 13,361 meetings with customers to discuss Cisco Technology using Telepresence.
Now comes the bottom line that I mentioned above about saving money (I didnt know this until today mind you) that 17,339 of the total 1110,627 meetings avoided travel meaning that Cisco saved about $165,080,000 (I like leaving zeros when talking about millions shows you how much we really talking about). That to anyone is a fair bit of money to be saving.
I was thinking until now that this could “potentially” save money, having this verified makes my eyes open to the potential of the solution.
Wonder if I can get one of these for demo in my living room