rpm and Douglas Reed on Moneyweb Power Hour

Douglas Reed (Moneyweb transcript) said:
It is, and it just shows you the futility of trying to regulate a market that should be free because the technology moves too fast, and the pace of change in just about everything in this Information Age is changing too fast for any regulator anywhere in the world...
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I will agree that ICASA is simply too inept and incompetent under its current lack of leadership aka the allegedly incompetent narcoleptic Parisian, but it should be noted that there are other telecoms regulators around the world that have been able to keep up with the pace of broadband technology and have successfully regulated their broadband markets and that have successfully driven Local Loop Unbundling - even though it's a very difficult job for any telecoms regulator, does not mean that regulation is futile and should not even be considered - especially in SA where the Local Loop has not been unbundled and where competition is basically prevented due to guavamint interference in the telecoms sector.

In SA, we need a strong 100% independent and level-headed regulator that facilitates competition instead of blocking competition due to incompetence and guavamint interference and consequently a complete lack of independence.

What is clear to me, is that chosing qualified and competent ICASA councillors that actually want to protect consumers and ISPs alike - from the anti-competitive lying cheating stealing corrupt corporate entity Telkodemonopolies, in an impartial and objective manner, is crucial.

Looking at ICASA's ADSL regulations, they're shockingly easy for Telkodemonopolies to side-step and challenge in court due to being vague and ambiguous, furthermore ICASA's ADSL regulations do not hold Telkodemonopolies accountable in the very likely event that Telkodemonopolies fails to comply with these ADSL regulations [e.g. no fines or other punitive measures are mentioned].
...But the network is shared, so what you get in South Africa because of the limited network is that very few people on the shared network normally abuse it. So sometimes 4% of the users use up 64% of the bandwidth, so that messes up the standards for everyone else.
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That's really not fair labelling customers as abusers - we pay a huge amount of money every month in ADSL speed connectivity rentals [which shouldn't even exist] and now we are accused of abusing what we pay Telkodemonopolies for, why blame customers - rather blame Telkodemonopolies for not investing in upgraded infrastructure and instead pocketing huge profits at everyone's expense.
 
...But the network is shared, so what you get in South Africa because of the limited network is that very few people on the shared network normally abuse it. So sometimes 4% of the users use up 64% of the bandwidth, so that messes up the standards for everyone else.
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This is almost standard in every single country. It's the classic 80/20 rule. 80% of your usage comes from 20% of your customers. Everyone else seems to be able to handle it so why can't Telkom?
 
...But the network is shared, so what you get in South Africa because of the limited network is that very few people on the shared network normally abuse it. So sometimes 4% of the users use up 64% of the bandwidth, so that messes up the standards for everyone else.
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I get so sick and tired of seemingly intelligent people spouting this utter bollocks, if ISPs had their way the only users they would have would be grandmothers who want to send the occasional e-mail. The more people are aware of what they are able to do on the internet, the more they will. High usage does not constitute abuse, it constitutes use. I can use tens of gigabytes of data a month on completely legal usage and these people try and play it up as some sort of tragedy of the commons everytime someone uses more bandwidth than they feel is fair.
 
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