Lack of INFRACO clarity ‘disconcerting’ - ISPA

You know the fact that government has 38% stake in Telkom and yet feels the only way to get Telkom to lower prices is to throw money at failures like Sentech and potential failures like INFRANCO irks me to no end. When you own 38% of the shares you basically call the shots.

For example Carl Icahn launched an initiative to get Time-Warner to split into four companies and he only owned 3% of the company. 3 freakin' percent and he had the CEO and Board running around like scared children. Does govt seriously expect us to believe they can do nothing when they have 38% of the shares? All they need is another 12% and they would have an absoute majority in voting rights and could do whatever they want.

From FinWeek, 30 November 2006:

"Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said at the time of Manuel's budget allocation to InfraCo that it would speed up the introduction of Neotel's services... [Ministerial spokesperson Gaynor Kast] says InfraCo would be a utility-type company providing wholesale bandwidth to other operators rather than a fully-fledged telco offering voice and data services to end users. That would initially be on an exclusive basis to second national operator Neotel, as previously negotiated with the SNO.

From the outset InfraCo's only assets would be the fibre optic network backbone built by Transtel and Eskom Enterprises on the back of their existing infrastructure. The backbone was initially built for inclusion into the SNO once licensed. However, Government decided recently that it would retain that asset..."

What's so confusing? All we are waiting for is the launch of Neotel's services (using the InfraCo backbone). It sure beats having to wait for the government (again).

First we have ANCBC (SABC) now we'll have INFRAANC,TELANC and NEOANC...What did we expect from ANC/SA (Pty) Ltd?

Hang on a sec, dont we the people choose the government and are the government not supposed to represent and work for the people? In which case we should be glad that the government has large ownership of these providers because they should be able to dictate terms to a degree and provide the people it represents with the best possible deals for connectivity (for education, business and residential consumers (after all itll be good for the people and therefore governmment and the country)) and not be soley influenced by profit...Hmmm, I wonder what went wrong?

Skip said:

You know the fact that government has 38% stake in Telkom and yet feels the only way to get Telkom to lower prices is to throw money at failures like Sentech and potential failures like INFRANCO irks me to no end. When you own 38% of the shares you basically call the shots.

Click to expand...

the fundamental conflict of interest at the heart of it all.......

"Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said at the time of Manuel's budget allocation to InfraCo that it would speed up the introduction of Neotel's services... [Ministerial spokesperson Gaynor Kast] says InfraCo would be a utility-type company providing wholesale bandwidth to other operators rather than a fully-fledged telco offering voice and data services to end users. That would initially be on an exclusive basis to second national operator Neotel, as previously negotiated with the SNO.

Click to expand...

Would think Alec Erwin knows as much about telecommunications as nuclear powerplants, I mean, what about that bolt? Liar.

Tommygun said:

Hang on a sec, dont we the people choose the government and are the government not supposed to represent and work for the people?

Click to expand...

Seems we work for the government not the other way around. Keeping them in mercs and lekgotla while they do nothing.

With Geniuses like Alec "the Idiot" Erwin in the mix - the same idiot who messed the casino industry around for years, the same idiot who doesn't know the difference between an incompetent worker and sabotage, the perfect idiot in fact, everything will be imminent and nothing will change.
Goverment doesn't want cheaper broadband, they just want more ways to screw us - hence their latest creation - Infraco.