71% ADSL Price Decrease Reasonable

[Prometheus]

BTech: your reasoning is flawed. If broadband was cheaper then there would be a breater demand for it. You also can't derive at the amount of pcs in use by looking at the amount of people that has a job. There are many people that don't have a job and have pcs. There are also a lot of children that have pcs. The market for broadband is there whether people have jobs or not and many jobs derive from technology.

As for your USA and UK example. I don't see us as being anything behind the rest of the world. You mention that they have a 24mbps uncapped and unshaped wifi connection and 500 tv channels and that dsl costs as little as R150/month with the slowest dsl being 2mbps. But think about why don't we have this here. Is it because of Telkom perhaps? No, it's not! It's because of government. There are people standing cue to provide us with more channels or to lay new fibre networks that will give us 40mbps internet. Why don't they do that you ask. Because the sheep in charge of it all won't allow them to do it. They have gotten used to having their goldmine long enough for them not to give it up without a fight.

You can't say that SA is 40 years behind just because the government is 50 years behind. Give credit where credit is due. Look at all the skills that's leaving the country. The next time you're in the UK just ask them some general questions about pc in some of their big stores. You'll be amazed at some of the stupid answers you'll get from some of these "techies".

 

[spaz]

Reunion

As for La Réunion it could be appropriate to point out that this is a French DOM, sort of offshore province, like if the Free State was in the middle of the Pacific kind of thing. So anything is possible inasmuch as a silly little place like this benefits both directly and indirectly from France's economy and technology and gets budgets, subsidies, whatever.

If I were (like) Telkom I would keep that relatively high SAT3 fee and use it as a generalised blanket argument for keeping any prices high. I mean, if international peering/transit was the major price factor by far how come the local loop is so expensive?

One thing you should not expect with democratic DSL pricing in the future is free service like a Hotline, not to start with at any rate. In France we are only just entering the next phase which is free Hotline wars after years of hectic premium rates and useless tech service to top it.

I've been reading posts here for a while and it is painfull as we've been through that in FR - all of it! With just as much pain and disgust. The pattern is typical: build walls to hang on to the monopoly as long as possible (even go as far as having to pay a fine later) while at least quadrupling basic monthly fees to amass enough cash to face competition when it --inevitably-- lands.

Finally, the regulatory body is a two-sided sword. One day Telkom says they'd like to totally slash telephone rates but the Body rules it out as unfair to the competition...ofcourse it is, see previous paragraph to understand how they can finance such a stunt. Net result: Telkom gains sympathy and maintains high rates.

More later.
Cheers!
- things will come to pass...and Telkom too