No Hope.

[SoulSe]

With the new Telkom ADSL model coming in November, our connectivity in South Africa is now actually moving backwards.

I trialed iBurst, still have a Sentech (spit) connection, have considered ADSL and messed around with 3G and GPRS.

I'm sick and tired of the horse **** we have to swallow in this country. Friends of mine in the States have just bought a darkfibre 7mb/s connection for $50 a month. Paris has just launched a 32mb/s connection and Japan is gearing up to launch the world's first gigabit connection.

Here I sit in South Africa with a crappy 128kbps connection that performs at 64k when I'm lucky. Our infrastructure is managed by a group of corrupt idiots. The government ties everything up in red tape and isn't really doing anything and the SNO looks like it will either be a toothless monster or never freakin' happen.

I love this country, I really do. But my business is IT and I can't do it here. I'm tired of falling behind the rest of the world in terms of content delivery and entertainment. I've had it with stupid excuses from Sentech and blatant corruption from Telkom. It's time something big happened. It's time for marching, protesting and serious public campaigning.

Our countries education and economic futures depend on our connectivity improving. The Internet is a pivotal enabler to so many vital fields.

Would marching help? Would mandates handed to minister's change anything? Would mass consumer action against Telkom be possible? Are South Africans too apathetic and pathetic to effect change? Is it perhaps the consumers attitude that has bred one of the worst service industries in the world here in South Africa?

What are your opinions? Because I'm on the virge of considering immigration... as much as that would kill me.

[ettubrute]

Would mandates handed to minister's change anything?

Only if it goes with some greenbacks stapled to the mandate, if I'm reading the situation correctly. Remember, with the ANC's stake in Telkom, quite a few of their salaries are indirectly paid by Telkom! So why bite the hand that feeds you?

[andres101]

i agree, the goverment is dragging it's feet cause the longer it takes to license the SNO, the more money they make. they will even make money out of the SNO!!

it is really unfair that the goverment makes money out of companies that are ripping us off... comflict of interest if you ask me.

[JStrike]

South Africans do generally seem more apathetic than many places, notably the USA. But MyADSL is a remakable step for South Africans all things considered. Now it is just a matter of not only sustaining the momentum achieved here, but increasing our efforts.

Marching is one option, there are others that have been disucussed. But as always, we need to overcome our built in apathy and actually do something. The people at antitrust.co.za are a good example of the energy needed. If everybody that sat here bitching about telkom actually joined up with antitrust, something might well be done, and soon. If you dont like antitrust's politics. then some other constructive and usefull avenue should be created

[JStrike]

The government does seem to be doing it's best to get commuication prices lower. Allbeit that this in context of it being a government and having to deal with all the bureaucracy and red-tape that is inherent in such things.

My concern is that people are not going to reward the SNO for having lower prices, just as we didn't reward CellC when they came out with slighly lower prices. If millions of people left Voda and MTN to go to CellC because of slightly lower prices, Voda and MTN would have lowered their prices, etc. See where I'm getting at. So what we have at the moment is the company that has the lowest prices and always did sitting with a paltry 2 million users, justifying Voda and MTN's reasoning that people dont care that much about price.

When the SNO comes out, even if their prices are slightly lower, everyone must reward them for it, to show that price does matter.

Unfortunatly I don't see that happening

[ettubrute]

CellC will only start having joy of lower prices once you can take your number with you from another network. It's too much trouble to change the number. Remember the cost of business cards, phoning ppl to inform them of the new number, breakdown in comms due to the one person you forgot to inform, etc. Was just too expensive to move to CellC! And there was, apart from the slightly lower price, no extra benefits. Thus, what we need, is the SNO coming in at low pricing, to enable them to steal a big market share...

[JStrike]

Yes, that made it harder, but nevertheless people didn't put in the effort to reward them. (And by effort, that includes the pain and cost of changing)

Not that would recommend CellC to anyone. They have shockingly bad service. But nevertheless...

[SoulSe]

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not completely pessimistic, but I'm appalled by how apathetic and miss-informed the average South African consumer is.

In Switzerland a while ago there were ridiculously huge taxes placed on red meat. So what did the Swiss do? They stopped buying red meat completely until the tax was withdrawn - it took just under a week.

Can you imagine what would happen if the whole of South Africa stopped paying their Telkom bills tomorrow? Think about it - Telkom could not take legal action against millions of subscribers. They would cut a few hundred.. maybe even a few thousand off - and then what? They would have no choice but to effect some change. This is the mass consumer action I am speaking of.

See, us South Africans have it all wrong - we think Telkom is the boss and we owe them something. Bull****! We PAY Telkom. They owe us! If someone who works for you stops performing, what do you do? You punish them, you stop paying them, you reprimand them! But us South Africans? No, we get all scared and start with "Please Mr. Telkom, wouldn't you consider, in your benevolent superiority..." see the problem?

Stop paying the losers. Give them no choice.

But here's the problem. If I said, "Ok guys, starting tomorrow nobody pays Telkom." I'd get thousands of, "Hell yeah, lets do it!"s but when the day actually came I guarantee there'd be two of us standing there with egg on our face and legal action.

The problem is a grassroots one - we need to start by educating the consumer. It's already begun and guys like this board and Hellkom and Antitrust are all doing good work, but it needs to be broader in its scope, needs to involve your average man in the street more and then maybe we can get something done.

[Splint3r]

i agree with this thread, the fustration sometimes drives me away from this forum for an hour or two
something really needs to be done, i wish i could do something, not sure what thou

[SoulSe]

i agree with this thread, the fustration sometimes drives me away from this forum for an hour or two
something really needs to be done, i wish i could do something, not sure what thou

You could start by heading over to http://www.antitrust.co.za/ and signing their petition

We're all fed up, but we need to couple those feelings with some action.

[ettubrute]

@SoulSE: When the 1024 offering became available, everybody complained about the price. To my big suprise, the day after it was announced, there where members who ordered it! I posted a snotty comment with the same idea as yours about consumer boycotting, but was basically ignored completely. Thus, you're right. At the day of a boycot, we would be 2 ppl standing there with egg on our faces. I wish the SA masses would wake up! But, how can we achieve it, if even the "educated" members of this board do not know how consumer might/power works??? (And yes, I AM sarcastic towards the rest of the members! Talk, talk, talk, and nobody does anything else! )

[Highflyer_GP]

the problem is how do we inform the majority of telkom customers who are vastly uninformed about how badly we are being ripped off compared to the rest of the world, and being left behind. we could take some kind of action by marching and protesting - but do you think the message would even reach the SABC news who as we all know are only good for broadcasting the ANC's propoganda? when last did the SABC broadcast any truth regarding telkom? telkom pays them huge money for advertising during prime time.

mass action would work overseas because their broadcasters offer unbiased news. the message about getting ripped off would reach the man in the street. that enables them to take the necesarry action. in SA, the only message that reaches the man in the street is how much time away from home the president spends overseas, or "how much the government is trying to help the poor", or year long court cases regarding arms deals. more pressing issues like the pathetic telecomms environment we find ourselves in never reach the masses, because it is these telecomms companies that are paying huge amounts in advertising revenues.

the same goes for newspapers. i doubt there are any newspapers with the balls enough to expose these daylight robbers if they are getting paid huge sums for double page adverts and the like. things will change when:
Poison Ivy gets kicked out,
eliminating conflict of interest by government selling their shares that they own in any telecomms companies,
finding an unbiased channel of communication willing to expose the truth and reach the masses,
having a regulator that has the balls to take immediate action, without having to hold 20 public discussions (sponsored off course by said telecomms companies).

[ettubrute]

eliminating conflict of interest by government selling their shares that they own in any telecomms companies,

Sure, this is paramount, but, how do you achieve it? Could one of the law people maybe give advise whether it is possible to take the gov to the constitutional court about this?

[SoulSe]

Our local news outlets are biased, but this is true all over the world. Fox News anyone? Unbiased news is a utopian ideal and, unfortunately, does not exist anywhere in the mass-media.

The difference is that your average consumer in places like the UK and America are savvy. They find out what they are paying for, they clue themselves up. In South Africa we are used to not having a choice. We are used to eating **** from the top. So we've become paradigm-driven and apathetic. The past regime is to blame for this. Their opinion was one of shut up or we'll sjambok you.

The new government must be given credit for being more open and generally honest, but as has been correctly pointed out here, we still have a huge corruption problem. The thing is, with the pre-1994 'regering' there was even worse corruption - we just never found out about it

I have faith that politics is improving in this country, but we still have a long way to go. The whole world has problems with companies like Telkom - the difference is that they don't let them get away with it - we do. And Telkom owns our politicians via shares and, probably, some shady deals.

The timidity in our average consumer is where the buck stops though, because there is no way to educate someone who doesn't want to learn.

Me, I'm optimisstic about the future, but what kills me is that it will be years before anything improves.

[FunnyWan]

I know I'll probably get shot down for this but has anyone here thought of getting mnet's Carte Blanche or SABC 3's Special Assignment on to this story?

A show like Carte Blanche can do a lot in terms of putting pressure.