How much will you really save on ADSL?

[noxibox]

I want to know how much money SAIX and Telkom Internet make. There is no mention of either in terms of their contribution to the group in the annual report. Maybe because Telkom don't want the angry hordes burning down their data centre when they discover how badly they are being ripped off.

They're just part of Telkom. They're not in any real way run independently.

I'm all for a good old-fashioned lynching. Or burning at the stake. I'll bring marshmallows

 

[noxibox]

To be fair you need to take into account inflationary operating cost increases and decrease in residential lines they experience every year.

You mean the people they cut off because they can't afford their high prices?

Considering that Telkom brings in billions there is no reason to be fair.

 

[Paul_S]

This whole Telkom scam just pisses me off!
I'm an ISDN dialup user who's been looking for a cheaper Internet connectivity option for a long time. My bills come to about R700/month minimum and I've hit the breaking point (bad finances atm).

I was hoping to switch to ADSL 192 when the price changes came into effect but I see those royal bastards are determined to not provide cheap connectivity.
My absolute limit is R400 per month for Internet connectivity. Speed isn't an issue - I'm happy with 64K. Are there any other options around? All the wireless options were very pricey and required expensive hardware.

One of my sideline business' requires Internet connectivity but at the moment Telkom are eating up all my profits and keeping me on the bread and milk line.
If there's nothing below R400 per month then I'm going to have to ask Telkom to remove my phone line at the end of September or October. I'm sure I can use the spare time and cash better elsewhere.

One very unhappy, unproudly South African citizen.

 

[BobJones]

Well done Juice!

Your numbers look remarkably similar to mine. I included the increase in voice line rental and the 9% increase softens the blow on Telkom even more (R3-4m p/m).

You should take into account the impact of user migration. Taking the table in the article it's gonna cost existing DSL384 customers R11 extra per month to get DSL512, and DSL512 customers R46 extra per month to get DSL1024.
With a 10% increase in subscribers and a 10% migration of users, there's close to R8m extra revenue p/m in this pricing structure for Telkom (on top of the R12m year on year you identified). This is probably how things will stand by Sep/Nov.

I think that there is going to be much more upgrading than that. There are already postings of 384->1024 migrations happening before the price change kicks in. And thats not even considering the ISDN customers who will find the 64/128k->384k migration very attractive.

Issue:
Is Telkom making space in the market for a 1.5/2Mbs product OR are they seeing a tail-off in the rate of DSL uptake, so they are trying to increase the proportion of higher revenue customers?

What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that even after the so-called ‘price reductions’ in August this year, Telkom will still be making R12 Million more this August than they did last August!! Which is a GROWTH in profit of over 50%!!! So why should we, the consumers, be satisfied with even a piddly 24%???

 

[Juice]

I doubt it has anything to do with the up-take. They are so far behind with their installations that any increase in up-take is not actually going to make any real difference..

J

 

[BobJones]

They are so far behind with their installations that any increase in up-take is not actually going to make any real difference..

To give the techies their due, they installed twice as many adsl lines in the last year compared to the 2 years previous.
I think that a lot of p'd off people are cancelling their installation request and moving to wireless?

 

[LifelongGamer]

Upgrading to a faster package?

Apart from the backlog in new ADSL installations, one must keep in mind that any intent for a customer to migrate to a faster ADSL line speed is limited to the maximum speed that their exchange is capable of.

I have friends that are still waiting for Telkom to enable ADSl at their exchange since 2002. Can you imagine how many still need to be upgraded from 512 to support 1024?

More likely Telkom's plan is to get the majority of it's ADSL customers onto the 384 (cheaper option) or 512 packages due to increasing pressure that anything below 256 should not and can not be considered "broadband". The spin-off is that technically they can then get away saying that they're upgrading the service levels for ADSL and increasing the base line speed. The fact that we're no better of really than before will just become semantics.

 

[Cara]

To be fair you need to take into account inflationary operating cost increases and decrease in residential lines they experience every year..

Don't get me wrong though i don't agree with the new pricing model

I'm willing to take these operating increases and deceases into account when Telkom does the same when the price of international bandwidth goes down and when economies of scale kick in to make the servce cheaper ... sounds like a decent swap to me

Perhaps just a bit of transparency would be good because the bottom line is that we really don't know what the actual costs are ... only know it is too high because of overseas comparisons.