ADSL without line rental

[Biscuit1018]

People still use landlines for voice?

Of course they do. For me 2 reasons
a) Business (run a business from home) - business uses landlines still

b) Mobile Voice Quality - The area I live in has sucky mobile reception. Vodacom and MTN.
Its an expensive area with big plots and no-one will sign off on having a mast near their house.
So we all live with poor cell reception

The world still has people that use telephones to speak on.

 

[pkid]

The time has come for the business heavy-weights to put their muscle into forcing Telkom into an invidious position that forces them to lower prices. We users are powerless against that monopoly. Telkom MUST be made to realise that renting out a copper wire that has been in place for the past 40+ years is nothing short of THEFT. An adaptor at a Telkom Exchange that provides the link to broadband surely costs only a few cents and once in place every cent thereafter is pure profit. We all know Telkom rakes in over R15-million every hour, and with an income like that, it can afford to lower prices.

I am guessing that all the large corporates have huge volume discount agreements with Telkom? Don't know if somebody can confirm? So I am guessing they pay less than I do per line.

 

[grapjas]

Whether you use the voice portion or not you will still need a piece of copper from the exchange to the premises. This is what Telkom are charging you for. The fact that it tied a telephone number allows Telkom to maintain and administer this piece of copper.

VOX could install their own piece of copper to premises, of course at that point that piece of copper has to go all way back to VOX's data centre.
Alternatively VOX could install a dedicated data line to the premises, (with the associated local lead, STU, Port fees, and trunk connectivity costs)

Of course this then pushes up the costs to the user

Telkom are more than happy to let me have a prepaid line for R130 a year.
Why does the analogue line for ADSL have to be more than that?

 

[Nimz]

It's never going to happen soon.....maybe in 10 years time.....it Might be possible.....Don't hold your breath though

 

[djrwb]

Telkom are more than happy to let me have a prepaid line for R130 a year.
Why does the analogue line for ADSL have to be more than that?

Now that is an excellent question.
Possibly because they expect a pre-paid telephone will generate revenue via call costs to offset line costs. But having said that when one signs up an ADSL line surely they could provide similar pricing, or are Telkom building in "fat" knowing that most ADSL lines will not be used for actual "voice" calls thus generating revenue?

 

[macboer]

Do anyone know where this "Telkom" dude lives. We can maybe organize something...

 

[djrwb]

I am guessing that all the large corporates have huge volume discount agreements with Telkom? Don't know if somebody can confirm? So I am guessing they pay less than I do per line.

Yes they do (or should be able to negotiate)pay lower fees, there are many ways that big business could pay less to Telkom (I know our company call costs to cell phone numbers via Telkom are equal to that of using Premicells and that is before our (approx) 27% discount (rebate) is applied) This does require a minimum of a 3-year fixed rate contract though. If you don't use all the time that buys you well there is no carry over. Even on data lines (but the terms are a bit restrictive in some cases, absolutely no VOIP allowed on these heavily discounted links) there are ways to minimise these costs via fixed period contracts etc (3 to 5 years) Various leased cost routing companies have approached us to install their equipment but the costs of their service is not even covered by the "savings" achieved. No matter how they try and cut it does not happen. Some have come up with innovative ways to save (or offset) costs but that means your customers pay more to call you (premium rate ? services)
In any case our uncapped 1Meg "business" ADSL line (link speed is actually 4Mb but throughput throttled to 1 Mb) at the office us at least around R2000.00 pm each (I think that excludes the router costs) so the R131.00 to Telkom for the piece of copper is inconsequential in that respect

 

[HideInLight]

Can't you drop the voice part of the copper line rental. I can remember someone mentioning it? It was about a R50 saving.

 

[tommy57]

GO NEOTEL & PROBLEM SOLVED. I got rid of the telkom **** 3 years ago.

 

[mmsimanga]

GO NEOTEL & PROBLEM SOLVED. I got rid of the telkom **** 3 years ago.

You need to provide facts to back that claim up ... how much were you paying? How much are you now paying with Neotel?

 

[djrwb]

GO NEOTEL & PROBLEM SOLVED. I got rid of the telkom **** 3 years ago.

Dont think so. Even our Neotel optic fibre is only a backup to the Telkom fibre and copper links. We even tried a dedicated highspeed wireless link (and we are within 500 metres of the ISP's data centre) which was removed after 6 months. Some of our affiliated companies have tried two other wireless service providers and have since switched back to Telkom ADSL due to performance and reliability issues

 

[ike]

Is it time for Telkom to allow users to purchase ADSL without a compulsory analogue phone service

ADSL without line rental

what do you think?

 

[D34M0n7]

This is very easy for telkom to implement... But the question is, will they ever do it?

We need a voice line for ADSL, the phone number is a requirement. So one will have to have voice, no choice there right now, not with how things are currently run here.

However its quite simple to get around:

All telkom has to do is realize that ADSL line rentals cost more than voice line rentals, therefore they write off the cost of a voice line rental for an ADSL subscriber, but charge people for voice rental if they don't subscribe to ADSL but have a home line.

Its just a matter of changing an ADSL subscribers monthly bill, instead of being charged for voice rental + ADSL rental they are charged just for ADSL... But if the ADSL subscriber decides to make phone calls off his voice line then telkom can charge him for the time he spends on the phone...

The ADSL line rental cost is already too high, the voice line cost is also through the roof, paying R131 a month even though I don't make ANY phone calls is just stupid.

Its seriously time for everyone to make a stand and approach ICASA etc here, we are going nowhere fast all because of telkom.

 

[tjunyat]

Telkom is already under financial pressure, and ADSL is one of the company’s biggest trump cards in the residential telecoms market. By allowing naked ADSL sales it will not only lose its one-bill advantage over ISPs, but also potentially miss out on lucrative voice revenue from ADSL users.

This is only the consumers problem because there is no competition.
I don't care if Telkom loses out on lucrative voice revenue (or no voice revenue, just double billing revenue), it's their job to retain users and not just lock them into whatever they choose because there is no other fixed-line last mile option.
If they provided the best deal, service, support, etc, then why would I move elsewhere?

 

[djrwb]

This is very easy for telkom to implement... But the question is, will they ever do it?

We need a voice line for ADSL, the phone number is a requirement. So one will have to have voice, no choice there right now, not with how things are currently run here.

However its quite simple to get around:

All telkom has to do is realize that ADSL line rentals cost more than voice line rentals, therefore they write off the cost of a voice line rental for an ADSL subscriber, but charge people for voice rental if they don't subscribe to ADSL but have a home line.

Its just a matter of changing an ADSL subscribers monthly bill, instead of being charged for voice rental + ADSL rental they are charged just for ADSL... But if the ADSL subscriber decides to make phone calls off his voice line then telkom can charge him for the time he spends on the phone...

The ADSL line rental cost is already too high, the voice line cost is also through the roof, paying R131 a month even though I don't make ANY phone calls is just stupid.

Its seriously time for everyone to make a stand and approach ICASA etc here, we are going nowhere fast all because of telkom.

Now would that not be the best
Unfortunately Telkom has always billed every item separately from day 1.
From the days of data comms all individual components were charged for. And if you wanted a full redundancy alternate routed line you paid a premium for that over and above the normal costs because it had to have "special" routing.

Much like the auto trade

I looked at a certain vehicle last year and base price was around R340K, not included in this price was the leather seats (compulsory) sound system, of yes stock radio was included in price but not available off the show room floor.
After speccing it out to the same standard as my current vehicle all the "extras" added another R200K to the base price, Sure I was getting a fancy (ish) high performance (maybe) two door "sports" sedan but at that price no thanks.

 

[carlwilliamb]

In addition, I think ADSL line rental should also fall away, and one should just need to pay for the installation. Basically you just need to pay for the ADSL port at the exchange to be enabled.

You cannot do away with line rental completely, the lines have to be maintained and it costs money to do that.

Yes I agree with taking away telephony services line rental, more than 50% of adsl users (if not more) don't even have phones plugged into their lines, esentially we are just throwing money at Telkom for nothing, but as all of you know we don't have a choice in the matter.

On the other hand, if they take away the phone line rental they might come back and say that now they don't have enough money to maintain the copper lines and they'll push the ADSL line prices up? Then everyone is screwed, again. Better they just keep the rental like it is! But maybe if telkom dropped the telephony line rental more people will get adsl, and as such generate more revenue plus they don't have to pay the extra money for installing new telephony switches (if that is possible).

Lets all switch to Neotel

Can't game on this, NEOTEL sucks balls at the moment, and their service is even worse than Telkom! I did not know that that was possible

 

[Sting]

Why won't Telkom allow ADSL on their PrepaidFone lines?

Works off a totally different platform, bypasses any links to a DSLAM.

 

[kingrob]

Who is Telkom's biggest shareholder? Enough said.

 

[g-d-zilla]

duh

duh to you too!

 

[g-d-zilla]

Telkom are more than happy to let me have a prepaid line for R130 a year.
Why does the analogue line for ADSL have to be more than that?

How did you arrange a "prepaid line for R130 a year"? This is my point exactly - the copper wire has been in place for more than 40 years and has been paid for repeatedly with no maintenance from Telkom. The wires do not give any problems as they are well hidden within our building's structure. Surely they know that. Why can they not then reduce the rental? They ought to be replacing all the copper wires with Fibre-Optics now at no expense to the subscriber who has probably paid for 10 cables already through years of loyal subscriptions to Telkom's monopoly.

The analog line or "ADSL connection" to the exchange is exactly the same line just with a new technology switch box connected to the phone to stop the ADSL hissing. So how do they run so called "digital" and so called "analog" over the same piece of copper wire? It's like having AC and DC through the same electrical supply cable.

While on my <SOAP BOX> I will also bitch about DStv. When there's a thunderstorm, the channel disappears. Why? SABC never had that technology and we never went without television even during a thunderstorm. Why is satellite any different?

While there are cellphone towers in our area, cellphone technology in SA is antiquated, old fashioned, difficult to hear, takes far too long to connect, is far worse than analog dial-up, and way far too expensive. Those cellphone providers are ripping people off to an amazing degree, but SAns are far too complacent to bitch about it and get these companies to DO something about reducing their profits in return for market growth. <SOAP BOX OFF>

g-d-zilla out.