Fantastic1
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2006
- Messages
- 570
No
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Question of the day ~ Do you have a dashcam?
LMAO Well put.
All I can say is I hope ABSA's got an escape clause in that contract. This is VERY expensive, And guess who foots the bill? That's right, the customers. I'm glad I have nothing to do with ABSA.
I trust them to maximise their revenues and profit.
Which is the minimum one can expect from any business enterprise. And indeed their moral obligation to shareholders, and I don't resent them for that (and no, I don't own a single Telkom share).
How one does that over the longer term is of course the issue. In a genuine free and open market they'd have to attract customers through competitive pricing and quality service. The abiding problem is that we have a very restricted telco regime, which uses police power to severely limit competition. This entrenches high prices and poor service.
Here's an old but very interesting BBC report on Africa's freest and best-served country. (Don't get sidelined by the other problems in that country - the point is only that governments always mess things up and always in the name of 'protecting the people' but the people always get a worse deal ... in the above country the government is ineffectual and so service quality and good pricing flourish). The lesson is clear - free things up and consumers get a good deal. The root of our problem is not Telkom - it's the State's protection of Telkom and its banning of real competition. Allowing another player like Neotel simply establishes a duopoly and splits the revenue between two instead of one, but it by no means a free or competitive market makes ... the market is just a regulated and unfree as before.
We will never see real change until we change the political policies behind this reality. With Zuma and his statist populism looming, that's becoming increasingly unlikely, imo.
Which is the minimum one can expect from any business enterprise. And indeed their moral obligation to shareholders, and I don't resent them for that (and no, I don't own a single Telkom share).
How one does that over the longer term is of course the issue. In a genuine free and open market they'd have to attract customers through competitive pricing and quality service. The abiding problem is that we have a very restricted telco regime, which uses police power to severely limit competition. This entrenches high prices and poor service.
Here's an old but very interesting BBC report on Africa's freest and best-served country. (Don't get sidelined by the other problems in that country - the point is only that governments always mess things up and always in the name of 'protecting the people' but the people always get a worse deal ... in the above country the government is ineffectual and so service quality and good pricing flourish). The lesson is clear - free things up and consumers get a good deal. The root of our problem is not Telkom - it's the State's protection of Telkom and its banning of real competition. Allowing another player like Neotel simply establishes a duopoly and splits the revenue between two instead of one, but it by no means a free or competitive market makes ... the market is just a regulated and unfree as before.
We will never see real change until we change the political policies behind this reality. With Zuma and his statist populism looming, that's becoming increasingly unlikely, imo.
"At least Telkom knows how to fix problems, they've been doing it for years, he says."
This is part of the problem! Instead of continual firefighting, how about putting preventative measures in place so that they didn't have to keep fixing problems?
It's a pity a forward thinking approach by Telkom is completely unlikely.
This is part of the problem! Instead of continual firefighting, how about putting preventative measures in place so that they didn't have to keep fixing problems?
It's a pity a forward thinking approach by Telkom is completely unlikely.
