We are comparing first world (OECD) with third world (SA & Telkom) ...
1. Since we a developing economy, prices should be cheaper because we have cheap labour. Laying fibre optical cable in South Africa should be a damn sight cheaper than in the USA.
2. We do not compare favourably with third-world countries either
We are comparing billions of broadband users with only a few hundred thousand...
3. The reason why we have only a few hundred thousand broadband users is because the market growth has been severly restrained due to extremely high prices.
We are comparing high population densities to low population densities ...
4. We actually have a far higher population density to many countries (including the USA). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
5. Most of the broadband users are in high density cities anyway. Why not cater for them?
We are comparing short distances with long distances ....
6. Look to USA, China, Russia
We are comparing the value of the Euro value against the value of the Rand ...
7. This should actually work in our favour. As our currency is cheap, our labour costs should be lower relative to our overseas counterparts. Since labour is the largest capital outlay, then our broadband prices should be half that of overseas countries. Also, broadband technology commoditized stuff now, so it should not require exceptionally skilled people to install and operate a broadband network.
We witnessed a massive uptake of cellular phones in SA. Nobody could have predicted it. The same should be for the Internet.
South Africa is at least ten to fifteen years behind South Korea and the USA. The blame lies squarely at the foot of the Department of Communications, which simply has not being doing its job.
Which countries did you compare SA with?
Why should we be forced to pay these high prices?? 
