-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: How do you normally pay for purchases in stores?
Eskom to cut its losses on telecoms
- Thread starter rpm
- Start date
The_Unbeliever
Honorary Master
ja right, no wonder why...
the sno's dragging its feet...
the sno's dragging its feet...
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
They have finally done what they have been threatening for some time... They funded a huge part of the SNO startup, then had to cut their losses after being dropped by the Govt. through years of stalling.
Telkom and government to blame for power outages
Telkom and government to blame for power outages
bekdik
Honorary Master
Sounds like herds of elephants are on the horizon ...
Llu
What I mean is, take how long it has taken the Old Parastatal we now know as Telkom to put in all those cables and exchanges. It took literally decades.
I am not sure what the SNO is actually going to do, but without Telkom's network they are pretty much dead in the water and probably can only offer wireless services initially.
Will the SNO build a fixed line infrastructure?
In the short term I don't think so. It takes time and lots of money.
The biggest problem we are faced with and a legacy of the DOC is the fact that when the Government privatised Telkom they bundled the whole Local Loop with it.
This was the biggest mistake the DOC/Government made, whether it was done as an honest attempt at liberalising Telecom in South Africa is a point of debate I do not wish to enter at this stage. I have my opinions, but let's leave it at that for now.
The Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) is going to be a major hurdle and I am not sure the DOC is equipped for the task as so far they have done pretty much very little other than creating more paperwork and stalling the whole liberalisation of the Telecoms Sector in South Africa.
ICASA are mere puppets of the DOC and need to check with them every time they need to do something. I mean go figure? If the law says x, y and z why must you check with another department at the DOC each time you are applying the law? This smacks of collusion and the public are led to draw their own conclusions. Much has been stated on this topic, so I will leave it as such.
It is a great pity that now we and the public must petition for the unbundling of the Local Loop as it has set this country back at least a decade in my opinion.
Telkom will hold onto the Local Loop as long as it can and make as much as it can while it can and that is the simple basic truth about the matter.
We were dealt a poor deal by our Government and they are in no hurry to sort it out for the many reasons discussed within these forums on a daily basis.
How long will it take to Unbundle the Local Loop is the big question.
For instance we are now in our third year with our ADSL Complaint with ICASA and other than hearings, paperwork and talk nothing has materialised other than the Line Access Rental portion going down a little while the cost of bandwidth has increased. The one balancing out the other and in actual fact a person using more than 3Gb of data might actually be still paying more for ADSL.
My ADSL Bill is still over a R1000 a month and I do not download unnecessarily or use torrents.
As Far as Eskom goes.
There is another parastatal that can throw millions at something and just absorb the losses. The 200 million spent on laying fibre optic cables is coming out of our Electricity Accounts. That is the truth in my opinion.
If that was a Private Company they would have been dead in the water to start off with, but they have the SA consumers to foot the bill so they are not worried. Mr Erwin can try and explain to us how 200 million can simply be spent on cabling that has essentially nothing to do with Electricity?
Imagine if these people were left to fend for themselves in an open market.
They wouldn't last a day in the real world.
As far as I am concerned the whole scenario goes all the way to the top levels of Government as the person/s in charge are ultimately responsible for the situation we have.
But who do we blame? Ivy, Erwin, Paris, Mbeki, Papi?
Who can carry most of blame?
The rotten apple starts at the top and moves down through the ranks.
They are all to blame in my opinion as if they really had South Africa's future at heart they would have done something about it already.
I must agree with you here, but I think it goes to show how long it actually takes to get a fully fledged fixed line operator off the ground.The_Librarian said:
What I mean is, take how long it has taken the Old Parastatal we now know as Telkom to put in all those cables and exchanges. It took literally decades.
I am not sure what the SNO is actually going to do, but without Telkom's network they are pretty much dead in the water and probably can only offer wireless services initially.
Will the SNO build a fixed line infrastructure?
In the short term I don't think so. It takes time and lots of money.
The biggest problem we are faced with and a legacy of the DOC is the fact that when the Government privatised Telkom they bundled the whole Local Loop with it.
This was the biggest mistake the DOC/Government made, whether it was done as an honest attempt at liberalising Telecom in South Africa is a point of debate I do not wish to enter at this stage. I have my opinions, but let's leave it at that for now.
The Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) is going to be a major hurdle and I am not sure the DOC is equipped for the task as so far they have done pretty much very little other than creating more paperwork and stalling the whole liberalisation of the Telecoms Sector in South Africa.
ICASA are mere puppets of the DOC and need to check with them every time they need to do something. I mean go figure? If the law says x, y and z why must you check with another department at the DOC each time you are applying the law? This smacks of collusion and the public are led to draw their own conclusions. Much has been stated on this topic, so I will leave it as such.
It is a great pity that now we and the public must petition for the unbundling of the Local Loop as it has set this country back at least a decade in my opinion.
Telkom will hold onto the Local Loop as long as it can and make as much as it can while it can and that is the simple basic truth about the matter.
We were dealt a poor deal by our Government and they are in no hurry to sort it out for the many reasons discussed within these forums on a daily basis.
How long will it take to Unbundle the Local Loop is the big question.
For instance we are now in our third year with our ADSL Complaint with ICASA and other than hearings, paperwork and talk nothing has materialised other than the Line Access Rental portion going down a little while the cost of bandwidth has increased. The one balancing out the other and in actual fact a person using more than 3Gb of data might actually be still paying more for ADSL.
My ADSL Bill is still over a R1000 a month and I do not download unnecessarily or use torrents.
As Far as Eskom goes.
There is another parastatal that can throw millions at something and just absorb the losses. The 200 million spent on laying fibre optic cables is coming out of our Electricity Accounts. That is the truth in my opinion.
If that was a Private Company they would have been dead in the water to start off with, but they have the SA consumers to foot the bill so they are not worried. Mr Erwin can try and explain to us how 200 million can simply be spent on cabling that has essentially nothing to do with Electricity?
Imagine if these people were left to fend for themselves in an open market.
They wouldn't last a day in the real world.
As far as I am concerned the whole scenario goes all the way to the top levels of Government as the person/s in charge are ultimately responsible for the situation we have.
But who do we blame? Ivy, Erwin, Paris, Mbeki, Papi?
Who can carry most of blame?
The rotten apple starts at the top and moves down through the ranks.
They are all to blame in my opinion as if they really had South Africa's future at heart they would have done something about it already.
Last edited:
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
Hmmm
Have Telkom even done this in their how-many-year monopoistic existence?
Have Telkom even done this in their how-many-year monopoistic existence?
EdRobinson said:
Oh they were supposed to do something similar (provide connectivity to rural areas in exchange for monopoly for five years) but basically ignored it and the DoC did jack squat to enforce it.
On the up side, if Transtel and Eskom sell their stakes that's less government control in the SNO...
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
Point
Yes.
Skip said:
Yes.
article said:
And what is Telkom required to do? Why should the SNO make up for Telkom's shortfalls?
Telkom will no doubt sit back and watch how the SNO has to spend a fortune getting services to the areas that Telkom refused to do because they preferred to miss targets and pay fines than provide service to the people because they were branded as 'not economically viable'.
The_Unbeliever
Honorary Master
... or SNOT should be thinking of doing deals with iBurst to give cheap, fast bandwidth...
*sigh*
*sigh*
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
ic said:
Speaks of lack of confidence in government IMO
If VSNL SA (sounds better than SNOT eh 
) has the right people, technologies, ideas and ICASA doesn't bugger them around then I see no reason why they wouldn't be pretty successful.
Going for corporates is fine - but Telkom have already signed 90% of the biggest spenders into long 3+ year contracts by offering up to 40% discount so the SMME market could be a good target as well.
Telkom has also neglected residential users to a huge degree and there is still a huge untapped residential market out there. If the SNO will be offering WLL services then there would be no line rental cost and infrastructure would cost a fraction of that of a fixed line network, so people can be lured in their millions by low monthly subscriptions and of course lower call costs.
Over 70% of Telkom's revenue comes from business and Govt so there are obviously huge amounts of very willing residential users out there who want or need a phone service other than their cell/3G combination.
All very interesting to watch, I'm just hoping they don't muck it up.
) has the right people, technologies, ideas and ICASA doesn't bugger them around then I see no reason why they wouldn't be pretty successful.Going for corporates is fine - but Telkom have already signed 90% of the biggest spenders into long 3+ year contracts by offering up to 40% discount so the SMME market could be a good target as well.
Telkom has also neglected residential users to a huge degree and there is still a huge untapped residential market out there. If the SNO will be offering WLL services then there would be no line rental cost and infrastructure would cost a fraction of that of a fixed line network, so people can be lured in their millions by low monthly subscriptions and of course lower call costs.
Over 70% of Telkom's revenue comes from business and Govt so there are obviously huge amounts of very willing residential users out there who want or need a phone service other than their cell/3G combination.
All very interesting to watch, I'm just hoping they don't muck it up.