Telkom on rapacious pricing: government let us do it

In a strange way, they're right... the government LET them do it... but it didn't MAKE them do it...
 
Uh yeah... we kinda knew that.

Which is why this whole thing is a Farce anyway, cos all that proves is that ICASA, the DoC and Telkom are all colluding together and have been for years.

Hopefully the competition tribunal will have the guts and the wherewithal to nail them hard.
 
gov.za gave Telkom carte blanche to be anti-competitive using any means possible?
 
As for them stalling and going to court the whole time that is something they learned from the yanks (SBC). When in doubt litigate, it's stalls proceedings and you continue on the same track.
 
Telkom's argument has no merit:
If it was a case of the government required them to do so or some sovereign act brought itself to bare we would have a different situation, what we have here is a different: Telkom had a government sanctioned monopoly which was its warrant in the market, so long as it acted within this warrant it is immune but if something is outside of the warrant they are accountable for that. The Telecommunications Act did not remove Telkom from the constraints of paying income tax or of compliance with the Companies Act - if it intended to it would have explicitly done so. Similarly if it is held - and it appears the courts had - that the competition laws which came into effect in 1999 did not explicitly exclude Telkom that they would apply and so they do. There is actually English cases on the subject back when an Act of Parliament or Letter Patent was the only way to form a company the issue of exceeding the terms of the warrant and so having your directors in the poo-poo even though they bribed who they thought they had to bribe. Telkom is in exactly that situation, it is not a sovereign and so is bound strictly to whatever privileges the sovereign gave it. Of course Telkom likes to think it is a sovereign.
 
Why does Telkom employ a PR department?All I hear is "no comment" or "We were unable to elicit a response from Telkom at time of publication"
 
so why cannot we tell(the)scum th fak off and take the approach that most companies do in this country. free LLU first and then solve all your no responses
 
How's this news? Of course the government allowed them to do it. Not only that but the government prevented any competition whatsoever that might have encouraged them to have less insane prices.
 
Since gov was in bed with Telkom for ages, its hardly unexpected.
 
Anyone remember 'the devil made me do it'? Coward's way to try & shrug off responsibility.
 
In exchange for exclusive rights, Telkom had obligations to rollout telecommunications to the masses.

Telkom/SBC used the exclusive rights to exploit the industry and did not meet those rollout obligations.

Then they use every legal possibility to delay justice.

If I was KT Corporation or an investor, I would be wary of the potential penalty of 10% of its 2003 turnover, R3.5-billion
 
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