Sign up with GoogleDene Smuts has to be a knowledgable person to serve on the parliamentary committee for communications, and therefore what she says can't be anything else that the DA's official point of view.
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http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/tech_stocks/468802.htm
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance’s representative on the parliamentary portfolio committee for communications, Dene Smuts, says Icasa’s decision to scrap monthly charges is puzzling, and the findings show a lack of authority expected from a regulator.
”Icasa admits it is only now analysing the costs to Telkom by inspecting this year's charts of accounts and cost allocation manual (Coacam),” she says. “Reinforcing this admission, it points out that it can request costing information on Telkom's copper-based broadband offering, and intends to formulate broadband policy with the department of communications.”
Smuts says the findings “cannot be said to have grappled with the substance of the problems brought to Icasa by MYADSL and other consumers.”
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Smuts says a once-off installation fee would presumably have to be enormous to cover capital and operational expenditure, and would stop broadband rollout: ”Icasa is surely not expecting Telkom to provide free broadband.”
She says Telkom has been slow in rolling out ADSL but that “ competition, political and consumer pressure” resulted in the operator dropping its prices twice this year.
Smuts says Telkom’s 12 new packages in which either dial-up Internet, ISDN or ADSL are bundled with desktop computers, “may do more for broadband take-up in SA than years of promises by government to introduce e-services and bridge the digital divide”.
“Obviously this would come at a price over the period of the contract”, she says, “but the success of cell phone handset subsidies in the early years of cellular service shows that such schemes can augment the take-up of new technologies.”
Get the report at
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/tech_stocks/468802.htm
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance’s representative on the parliamentary portfolio committee for communications, Dene Smuts, says Icasa’s decision to scrap monthly charges is puzzling, and the findings show a lack of authority expected from a regulator.
”Icasa admits it is only now analysing the costs to Telkom by inspecting this year's charts of accounts and cost allocation manual (Coacam),” she says. “Reinforcing this admission, it points out that it can request costing information on Telkom's copper-based broadband offering, and intends to formulate broadband policy with the department of communications.”
Smuts says the findings “cannot be said to have grappled with the substance of the problems brought to Icasa by MYADSL and other consumers.”
<cut>
Smuts says a once-off installation fee would presumably have to be enormous to cover capital and operational expenditure, and would stop broadband rollout: ”Icasa is surely not expecting Telkom to provide free broadband.”
She says Telkom has been slow in rolling out ADSL but that “ competition, political and consumer pressure” resulted in the operator dropping its prices twice this year.
Smuts says Telkom’s 12 new packages in which either dial-up Internet, ISDN or ADSL are bundled with desktop computers, “may do more for broadband take-up in SA than years of promises by government to introduce e-services and bridge the digital divide”.
“Obviously this would come at a price over the period of the contract”, she says, “but the success of cell phone handset subsidies in the early years of cellular service shows that such schemes can augment the take-up of new technologies.”
