Ok, The above was my sort term view and a rather selfish one at that
so here is my take on the original question "How can Telkom save itself..."
Cut the losses and concentrate on core capabilities and strengths.
Recognise that voice is now just another set of data packets; change the paradigm, Telkom is no longer primarily a voice carrier nor should it be. Concede the voice war, the cell phone companies won that one ages ago, but keep the voice service running and adjust to the current strengths.
Drop all the fancy packages and complex bundles, it is no good trying to emulate the competition.
KISS - Make local calls (within the same exchange area) free.
Have a standard call rate for all national calls and if necessary a higher rate for international calls and inter network calls.
Don't try and negotiate pearing agreements with the other neworks, become a hub and let the other networks use the Telkom network as the main interconect.
Recognise that the international call market will be lost to VoIP, don't fight it, embrace it, and offer a VoIP service.
They will retain the current market penetration for Landlines and possibly increase it as companies still need a fixed line to give any semblance of being legitimate and to provide customer support / sales queries.
Become a carrier not a player. Concentrate on providing a reliable cost effective network. Forget wireless in the city’s (but seriously conceder it in smaller towns before the wireless carriers capture the rest of the country.) and concentrate on getting fibre to the office / home. Then open up that network and let the current ISP’s rent capacity and provide the services. Don’t wait for ICASA to force LLU on the market, look forward to it now, rent out space in the exchanges and host DSLAMS or lease them and provide a maintenance service, so that the ISP’s can concentrate on the routing and billing software and the Telkom Technicians can look after the hardware. Telkom are great at a technical level, the PR and marketing sucks big time, let the ISP’s market the service and offer first line support and the technicians do what they do best keep the data flowing.
Embrace the new undersea fibre cables, the SAT3 monopoly is over, it has been milked for what it could sustain but the milk is running out, change the strategy entirely, let SAIX buy in bulk from the new cables and resell that bandwidth to the ISP’s, to package as they see fit, over the Telkom network. Don’t even sell SAIX internet accounts, give the home user / small business market to the ISP’s and concentrate the real efforts on the larger corporate entities, before they are lost to IS, Verison, Neotel and others who are starting to aggressively target the high end.
Telkom has the advantage; they could provide an excellent backbone and save the competition the cost of duplicating the network. But not at the current pricing. As long as it is the same price to lay your own fibre, competition will do so, and in the long run Telkom will have an old inferior network. Work with them and a healthy profit can be made from the cash they would have spent to compete, buy up the fiber that the municipalitys have been laying for the past few years, get an agrement form government that if anyone digs a trench Telkom may drop fiber ito it and at the same time build a high quality network without having to worry about the little things such as home users. Concentrate on the big money, leave the rands and cents to smaller players reselling the capacity.
Let’s hear what the rest of you come up with.
