Market slaps down bold Telkom growth strategy

my tears have not stopped.

From laughing, that is...

LOL, this is the funniest thing i've heard today. but then the day is still young.

You know you have completely messed up when

1) you cannot please your customers and
2) you cannot please your investors

When
1) You are damned if you do not invest in new infrastructure and
2) damned if you do.

If Telkom had always spent money on infrastructure, the market would have been used to it, their customers would have been happy (yes Telkom, customers CAN like the people they do business with!) and this wouldnever have happened.

You made your bed... and so on.

if telkom dont invest, then we stuck with cruddy "broadband", if they do invest then say goodbye to any price reductions as they ned to "recover costs" so never mind telkom being stuffed. The public are really stuffed now.

TELKOM has unveiled a R30bn investment and acquisition strategy which will deliver a sophisticated broadband network within five years and establish the telecommunications group in three countries outside SA.

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The last report said a R30bn investment on the network, nothing about the network outside of our beloved country.

I really want to know how much of that R30bn is going to be spent on improving our situation and how much is going to be spent outside of our boarders?

As a result, Telkom would invest about half of the R30bn in a new network, dubbed the next generation network, of which broadband was a key element. The network would support a wide range of services, including voice, data and multimedia.


Great wonderfull all of that on a 3 gig hard capped account , you have as much vision as ray charles , we have some form of broadband , but we cant make use of those multimedi service because of your lame capping change that , and the rest wont be a problem ...

Can it be?

Briefing analysts at a presentation in Pretoria yesterday, the message from Telkom executives was that the good times may be over for now but the new strategy was aimed at growing revenue streams in the longer term.

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Is Telkom finally paying attention to what we've been lamenting over for years? I hope so. This may be the beginning of a trend to re-align our services with that of international world-class broadband leading countries! I just hope the costs are lowered accordingly as well

Molotsane said the strategy also focused heavily on boosting customer service and envisioned Telkom being the market leader in three countries outside SA. Nigeria and Kenya were among the countries that Telkom was looking at, although it had also held talks with Portugal Telecom.

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We've all heard Mr Molotsane give surmons on his 'pillars' for success, one of which being Consumer Centric approach to improving services and making Telkom a 'pleasure' to deal with ... We're still waiting to see any evidence of this from Telkom. No communication from Telkom regarding ADSL order delays on installation, unacceptable backlogs causing installations to be moved further and further (from the originally overdue 4 - 6 weeks as advised when placing an order in the first place). The inability to provide advertised solutions (such as the option to self-install) and thereby bypass the backlog of waiting for a technician to come to your premises (and the list goes on) -> does not inspire faith nor confidence and definitely is not focused on providing service to the consumer.

(offtopic: Has anyone else noticed that certain areas in Johannesburg seem to have major backlogs for ADSL installations, while other areas have no backlog at all (e.g. Florida is backlogged whilest Alberton gets installations done within 4 weeks). How about loadbalancing the techs, Telkom? Or is that too much to ask for efficient service delivery? Then again, the Alberton case could've just been pure luck for my friends.)

EDIT: Looking at the last quote - is Mr Molotsane including or excluding South Africa when it comes to "boosting customer service" and becoming a "market leader" ... the in three countries outside SA part of the sentence can be read both ways

maybe existing network is costing too much for them to patch it here, there + maintain when the competition is building a new network ground up, thus can incorp the latest and greatest gizmo's. seriously though, if telkom owned a cell company fully, imagine how cheap they could make calls or rather(heh) how much profit they can make almost instantly.. then again with interconnection prices suggested being regulated it might not be worthwhile.

I'm sure they can provide the other services for cheap, broadband(int) however will always remain expensive as long as they control access to it and no-one can/willing? to produce access for cheaper.

looks like telkom is busy recovering

Moederloos said:

You know you have completely messed up when

1) you cannot please your customers and
2) you cannot please your investors

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You usually can't do both, but you should be able to please at least one. Telkom has spent the last few years lining the pockets of investors so perhaps it is time to lean towards customers. If they want customers, that is.