Broadband Prices: what else needs to be achieved?

seted said:
Telkom doesn't really gain anything by scrapping the rental. It's possible that there might be a standard access charge in the future, regardless of line speed, but Telkom will need to recoup its investment in infrastructure in some way.
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almost all their investment was done using taxpayers' money. consider the world cup infrastructure, it was funded by the govt.
 
Smooth Criminal said:
Surprised that there was no mention of LLU. IMO that's currently the last (and biggest) hurdle.
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Grief... if the article doesn't mention that, then what did it say... I'm now not interested in reading it lol...
 
root01 said:
almost all their investment was done using taxpayers' money. consider the world cup infrastructure, it was funded by the govt.
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When the state throws money at SAA do I get a discount on tickets? No. Same with Telkom.
 
Voltorr said:
The ISP costs are great at R200 for uncapped services, but I'm still not going to get it when i have to pay an extra R283 just for access. I Pay MTN R189 for 500 megs and while that doesn't even cover browsing whenever i want tripling it for uncapped services just doesn't seem worth it to me ):
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My thoughts exactly!
 
ToxicWazte said:
When Telkom was privatised, all the infrastructure and publicly-funded assets SHOULD have been seperated from Telkom, and put into a completely seperate entity. Telkom should then have been charged for utilising the infrastructure, and all proceeds would go to maintiaining the infrastructure.
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Telkom shares were not just given away to private investors during the privatisation. They were sold - the government received money for them that went back into the coffers.

ToxicWazte said:
2nd option is to split up Telkom into distinct companies, like Telkom Retail, Telkom Business, Telkom Infrastructure - all 3 would still be under the umbrella of the Telkom Group. All companies, including Telkom Business and Telkom Retail, as well other competitors like ISPs and Neotel will then lease the facilities from Telkom Infrastructure at standard, open prices. Everyone pays the same, and gets the same service and access.
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That has already happened. ICASA required this of Telkom a few years back and the structures are already in place within Telkom. The ISP's deal with Telkom on basically the same wholesale basis as Telkom retail.

ToxicWazte said:
Telkom, like most Telcos worldwide, will be very reluctant to give up the local loop completely, as it is a huge asset worth multi-bilions. Also, Telkom's IPConnect and IPStream products are already heading in this direction.
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Telkom are reluctant - yes - but in reality there are probably only 2 or 3 operators in the country with the capital to roll out services on an unbundled copper pair. This is not going to give consumers the kind of competition that they expect.

In my opinion the best solution is LLU-lite (aka BitStream) at competitive prices. This allows a fairly substantial number of providers to bring a variety of services to customer - including Internet access, IPTV, etc - at a far more reasonable level of investment.
 
gregmcc said:
Just points 1 & 2 would make my year!



I'm in the same boat - dreading the long call to Telkom trying to explain to cancel my data portion and not the whole DO3 package. :eek:
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Dude thats why you should go to the TelkomDirect store instead. I had the same worry when I wanted to cancel my ADSL package from them in fear they will get rid of my line as well. I learned a long time ago that talking to the idiots on the phone is the worst thing you can do - i went to their branch at the mall and made sure I double checked that they did what I asked of them. I even made a nuisance of myself and told them to confirm to me what they typed in on the system "you are SURE you ONLY cancelled the DATA portion and not the CONNECTION".

They cant blame me for being an a-hole....but doing it this way reduces the chances of their incompetent operators effing things up.
 
ToxicWazte said:
Telkom does currently own all the lines and infrastructure. Most of all the lines and infrastructure was installed when Telkom was still a completely government-owned and run enterprise. So most of it WAS funded by government, which in turn is funded by tax payers.

When Telkom was privatised, all the infrastructure and publicly-funded assets SHOULD have been seperated from Telkom, and put into a completely seperate entity. Telkom should then have been charged for utilising the infrastructure, and all proceeds would go to maintiaining the infrastructure.

This is what LLU aims to do. However, LLU is a very heated debate worldwide. There are different ways of implementing LLU. The way I see it, there are 3 options.

1st option is to take the infrastructure away from Telkom completely, either through a payment or some form of agreement, and putting it into a completely seperate entity, completely independent of Telkom, for e.g. a state-owned enterprise like Infraco, or perhaps a privately owned entity, where Telkom, Neotel, ISPs and other providers can buy shares in.

2nd option is to split up Telkom into distinct companies, like Telkom Retail, Telkom Business, Telkom Infrastructure - all 3 would still be under the umbrella of the Telkom Group. All companies, including Telkom Business and Telkom Retail, as well other competitors like ISPs and Neotel will then lease the facilities from Telkom Infrastructure at standard, open prices. Everyone pays the same, and gets the same service and access.

A 3rd way is to keep the infrastructure within Telkom, without forcing Telkom to split into seperate divisions, or giving up anything. However, they will be forced to lease their facilities to competitors in an open manner, using standard pricing.

I think the 3rd way is the most likely scenario for RSA, as it will be the quickest, and will see the least legal and regulatory challenges from Telkom. Telkom, like most Telcos worldwide, will be very reluctant to give up the local loop completely, as it is a huge asset worth multi-bilions. Also, Telkom's IPConnect and IPStream products are already heading in this direction.

Can anybody else think of any other possible scenarios, and which will be the most likely?
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Very well stated!
 
I agree that the cost of line rental should come down. We should not expect substantial decrease for reasons best known to Telkom. What is required is for ICASA to investgate the operational costs of access lines against what is being charged, so people know exactly why and how much they need to pay. Is this visible? Practically impossible! I bet ICASA will take just as long to let the results known as the time it will take to unbundle the LL!
 
Rudimental said:
What's missing there is that ISPs need to actually start providing consumers with KPI, as required by law, and also publish their contention ratios.

The industry definitely needs more transparency in this regard, especially in the light of the recent performance issues. Cheap bandwidth is not of much worth if it is over-contended or of otherwise poor quality.
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This is the critical issue for now which no one seems too worried about, are we all waiting for time to unfold on these accounts before we know which ones will be less contended?
 
I would be happy with one move in the short term which wouldn't hurt Telkom - for either the same fee or a small increase, migrate most of the base sitting on the ridiculous 384kbps link at least to 512kbps - an easy jump of 33%. Consign 384 to the bins of history.

The new ADSL dslams can easily handle this.

Telkom should keep ownership of the copper - it's an expensive business with lots of maintenance and highly unionised teams. If they haven't bothered to convert their class 5 switches to next generation and save money, then they must live with the result.

Telkom complain this business is unprofitable, but if they reviewed their adsl pricing they could offer more-for-more and increase margins at the same time as improving customer satisfaction.
 
entrepr said:
I would be happy with one move in the short term which wouldn't hurt Telkom - for either the same fee or a small increase, migrate most of the base sitting on the ridiculous 384kbps link at least to 512kbps - an easy jump of 33%. Consign 384 to the bins of history.

The new ADSL dslams can easily handle this.
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It's already on the cards. Should be here within 9 weeks. :)
 
Voltorr said:
The ISP costs are great at R200 for uncapped services, but I'm still not going to get it when i have to pay an extra R283 just for access. I Pay MTN R189 for 500 megs and while that doesn't even cover browsing whenever i want tripling it for uncapped services just doesn't seem worth it to me ):
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Right - 500MB that would last me half a day. A lot of us have progressed beyond just pulling email down.
 
root01 said:
almost all their investment was done using taxpayers' money. consider the world cup infrastructure, it was funded by the govt.
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Can you prove those 2 opinions? eg. exactly what are the govt funding for the SWC?
 
enter helloPEER.com

BruceA said:
As grateful as I am to MWEB and the ISPs that have taken up the challenge, the next step is to increase speeds without adding cost.
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HELLOPEER.com!!!!!!

Companies Who Don't PEER :mad:
  1. TELKOM
  2. MTN
  3. Internet Solutions
  4. Vodacom

Companies Who PEER :)
  1. TENET
  2. Neology
  3. iBurst
  4. MWEB
  5. Posix
  6. VOX Telecom
 
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