South Africa's cellular operators are ripping off consumers

[Beri]

https://www.icasa.org.za/Portals/0/R...ermination.pdf

[moklet]

Now give us some real news. This is not news this is just stating the obvious facts

[BrandOfRiva]

Boorman: "blahblahblah, its too complicated to explain to the peasents but we're not ripping you off - honest!"
Simple fact of the matter (as the report paints it very very clearly) some bloody how our cellphone costs are 32/46 in Africa... this is vs countries who are ("were" is probably more apt with the pitiful progress our government has been showing) miles behind us in progress.
This just follows the trend of everything else around here where we pay more for less benefit and get told that all is well and we just need to shut up and live with it. Not to point out the obvious - but its funny how many of these issues point to our highly competent government

[CyberStorm]

CyberStorm's order of company hate (by industry):

1. Banks
2. Medical Aids
3. Telecoms
4. Insurance

And year after year they post record profits. Shamelessly ripping us all a new one. Only companies I hate more than banks are these telecoms companies.

[VJB 449]

What needs to be investigated when the DA come to power is the corrupt relationship between ICASA and the telecoms providers. Without a doubt people in ICASA are getting kickbacks for not sorting out this issue. Those evil people need to be prosecuted.

Well we see with MTN and Iraq that bribing is their way of doing business. The cANCer obviously pockets their share.

[SaiyanZ]

The name of the product "Vodacom 4 less" is quite funny when it is just about the most you can possibly pay for a call in SA at R2.79 per minute.

[Selloml]

The name of the product "Vodacom 4 less" is quite funny when it is just about the most you can possibly pay for a call in SA at R2.79 per minute.

And that seems to be their default tarrif on new starter packs. How many uninformed users will ever use their 1181 to change that?

[AfricanTech]

....and in other news it was revealed today that the Pope is indeed Catholic and that the earth revolves around the sun.

[The_Librarian]

I'm getting tired of people waffling and faffing on and on about our high tariffs, but nothing is being done about that.

[Pr⊕phet]

I'm getting tired of people waffling and faffing on and on about our high tariffs, but nothing is being done about that.

Talk is easy, doing is hard. Once mybb was the latter.

[brentmin]

Sigh! I wouldn't be surpised if Icasa staff are receiving cutbacks for hamstringing the organisation.

[akescpt]

Everybody does it! Why should they be any different?

[zamicro]

I returned from India two days ago.
What I found was, calling SA from India is the same price as calling an SA cellphone from SA.

Food for thought.

Whats even more interesting: A few years ago I worked in Malawi, and it was cheaper for my wife to call me from her VC cellphone to my Malawian cellphone, than for her to call someone else in SA on their cellphone.

[The Trutherizer]

What really, really gets me is that people normally have a budget to spend on any given thing. And it's not like wires and cellphone towers wear out from the data that passes through them. They can price voice especially at almost any price point and people will still spend just as much on it. Think about it... If per minute was worth less then free minutes would be worth less to give away, but people will still make extra calls afterwards if it was cheap enough. Or probably more, because voice calls would not be perceived as an expensive thing any more so people would probably just call away like crazy.

[Lian]

How about some actual news, not something everyone already knows...