Complaint to Competition Commission

[booswig]

After a seemingly long period I have at last a reference number, the official form (on which I must formulate my complaint) and some feedback from the Competition Commission.

My original complaint was that Telkom is abusing their dominant market position. However, and that is the question that they threw back at me, why do I say that they are abusing their market dominance, and what proof do I have.

I therefore would like to invite all that is interested to give me some feedback so that I can draft a reply letter to them ASAP.

In short I am claiming that Telkom is a dominant firm (as defined in the Competition Act of 1998), and that they are charging an excessive price to the detriment of consumers, as prohibited in Section 8 of that Act.

My proof is the excessive profits that Telkom is making, compared to other companies in South Africa (profit per employee as well as profit compared to other companies doing business in South Africa ... Telkom is standing far above the others).

However, I need to formulate this better, as well as get as much as possible ammunition that i can.

 

[pope24]

Maybe you could allege that Telkom is abusing its position as the sole supplier of local and international bandwidth to charge prices well in excess of market value to the ISP community. I am thinking of the cost to SAIX of providing bandwidth and the actual price charged by them. This in conjunction with SAIXs relationship with TelkomInternet means that other ISPs are unfairly discriminated against.
The core of the arguement is that unless SAIX has a transparent pricing mechanism or their pricing is regulated it is impossible for other ISPs to compete strongly on the basis of price against TelkomInternet

 

[nGAGEd55]

My proof is the excessive profits that Telkom is making, compared to other companies in South Africa

And compared to companies from overseas, for example BT, which has bout 7 times more customers but only makes double the profit. (http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=32789)

 

[pope24]

Overseas comparisons have little to do with this case. You have to show they are abusing their local market dominance. That is like complaining about the motor manufacturers because cars are cheaper in the US.

 

[doobiwan]

Your most important facts are:

1. Why they aren't capping their own ADSL users while capping the 3rd part ISP's for local and international. It's extremely anti-competitive.

2. Why they are charging exhobitant data landing fees, for data that parties such as MCI, T-Systems and VSNL already own.

3. Cost wise you can ask why we have to pay more for "line rental" for 512 over 192, when the "caps" are already usage based based.

4. Why are we shaped and capped? If capping in to control usage than the only purpose of shaping is to be able to extort further revenue by shaping - monopolistic and abusive.

 

[stoke]

Teklom's shaping is ANTI-COMPETITIVE.

Teklom use Voice Over IP for their telephony services. And they have been doing this for years.
When the esteemd minster announced the great VOIP freedom, teklom responded by shaping their standard ADSL offering so that VOIP services will suffer. They claimed that customers wanting to utilise VOIP should utilise the "Unshaped" service which is much more expensive than the shaped service.
This in effect raised the cost at which service providers could provide VOIP services, and further entrenched teklom as the only leading supplier of VOIP services.
Teklom should be forced to provide the Unshaped service at the same cost as the shaped service, so as to not allow telkom the ability to penalise service providers that are trying to sell services that telkom already provides.

Dang - wish I could word this better - brain not functioning properly ... need help .. please ...

 

[booswig]

lol. All ideas. But, everything is heavily focusing on ADSL ... I am talking about all the products of Telkom, business internet (diginet and ISDN), telephones, ADSL etc. They are raking in massive profits and to the cos to of the average consumer (if one define the average consumer as the person with an average income ... about R1,800 pm). For such a person R.100 per month for the line rental alone is quite a bit, then, I exclude telephone calls, internet etc.

The big thing is that, before I can go to the DTi, I have to claim that the Competition Commission cannot adequately adress my issues and complaints. Once I can say that, I can start hammering the minister of trade and industry for not implementing his act. The minister of telecommunications is a fool, and it seems do not care about being called one. The minister od trade and industry however hate that ... and some pressure on him may assist us to force an external enquiry about the impact that Telkom have on the consumer and economy, and force him to use his act to direct telkom to shape up.

In general they are also faster and more efficient that communications.

 

[doobiwan]

In that case, compare the costs and capabilities of the various products relative to each other.

(squeezing the poor) Why does it cost R4800 a month to keep a 56k connection open using a dial up modem when an "always on" product such as ADSL, which uses the exact same infrastructure is 10 times faster and costs less than half the price.

Why does it cost almosts R150k/month for a 1Mb Diginet line which technically offers little improvement over the same above mentioned 512k ADSL line?
Anti competitive: The ADSL product is specifically handicapped (reset, no static IPs etc) so as not to compete with Diginet, for purely profit reasons, not technical.

Why will Telkom not interconnect with VoIP providers even though they're legal. Not even at cost.