Hi all,
Today I attended the final day of the ICASA public hearings. I got there late in the morning and so only heard half of Mweb’s presentation. This was followed by Telkom’s rebuttal to the issues raised over the past few days. The ICASA panal then asked Telkom questions, followed by questions to Telkom from the audience.
I just thought I’d give a brief overview of my impressions. Please note that these are MY impressions from what I saw, and it is likely that others have different opinions. Please don’t attack me for MY opinions, though if you were there and have different impressions then I’d like to hear on what points you disagree with me and why.
To me, Telkom’s attempted rebuttals came across very poorly. They did not answer a number of questions, saying that these were technical questions and since the Telkom representatives are not engineers, they are not equipped to answer. ICASA did not let this go, and repeatedly had to request that Telkom furbish ICASA with the relevant information soon.
As could be expected, Telkom also tried to fob off some questions by talking, but not actually addressing the questions at hand. In this regard, I personally think the ICASA Chairwoman did a sterling job. On a number of issues that Telkom talked around without actually answering the question, she refused to continue until Telkom gave a more satisfactory answer. The Chair was particularly pushy towards Telkom on the issue of the R86 additional phone line rental. However, there was some ‘fobbing off’ that Telkom got away with.
The ICASA panel put some excellent questions to Telkom. To me, it seems that the public submissions were very well examined by ICASA. The panel seemed well informed about the issues the public has with ADSL. Furthermore, they seemed very competent and capable of ‘seeing through’ Telkom’s rhetoric, and challenged Telkom in this respect.
BTTB, your presentation was raised several times by ICASA, especially with regard to the Diginet comments made on your behalf. It seems your presentation must have had quite an impact on the ICASA panel – Cara obviously did an excellent job in bringing your points across. Rpm’s presentation was also raised a number of times during the concluding discussions. And, like BTTB, it is clear his presentation was rather influential.
Telkom provided ICASA with the Markinor survey, and the ICASA chair then read out a couple of methodological facts on this survey. I thought many would like to know what was said – The Markinor survey was conducted in October 2003, and at the time Telkom says they had about 30 000 ADSL customers. 759 ADSL customers were surveyed, about half were residential users (370), about half were business users. 87% were said to be satisfied with the service. This is all the information that was released. I later approached the ICASA Chairwoman and asked for additional information. She said she had not read what degree of privacy Telkom had requested on the Markinor survey, but that she would read and if there were no requests for privacy or no grounds for confidentiality, then this Markinor report would be made available on the ICASA website within the next few weeks.
The issue of static IPs was also prominent. A MyAdsl user (sorry, didn’t get his name) pinned Telkom VERY nicely on this issue. He basically made ICASA and the audience see that Telkom had no good justification for not providing static IPs, and that it was simply a clear example of Telkom’s abusive mentality. Well done!!!!
One thing did concern me though – Telkom claimed to have engaged extensively with rpm, even saying that part of the engagement with him was conducted through letters. Whether this is true or not, I do not know. What did annoy me though was the suggestion that rpm had not been entirely honest with ICASA over the extent to which Telkom had engaged on a personal level with rpm. Furthermore, Telkom used this opportunity to imply (note, they did NOT directly say, but they IMPLIED) that Telkom had engaged with the users of the MyAdsl forum. Check the transcripts to see what was said.
The Tarifica Report also came up. There seemed to be a lot of confusion on this issue, confusion that Telkom perpetuated. They simultaneously acknowledged the existence of the Tarifica report and denied knowledge that it existed. When they were claiming it existed, Telkom went to great lengths to point out that this was an independent report which had nothing to do with Telkom and that Telkom had not commissioned it. When ICASA requested a copy of the Tarifica Report, Telkom said they didn’t know if it existed. I added my two cents on this issue. I tried to clarify for ICASA and the audience that the Tarifica Report in question DID exist, and whilst Tarifica was not contracted per se by Telkom, Telkom PAID Tarifica to do extra analysis on their behalf, so in this way it cannot be considered an independent report. I further added that Telkom’s above comments on the Tarifica Report were a “deliberate attempt by Telkom to mislead” the ICASA panel as well as the audience. Telkom did not take kindly to my comments. They confirmed that Telkom had paid Tarifica money for extra analysis, but said that they “totally reject” my statement that Telkom was misleading those present.
Overall, from the few hours I was there, my impression is that ICASA did an excellent job. They could have held Telkom more accountable and requested further clarification on some points, but overall I was happy with what I saw from the ICASA panel. I think Telkom came out looking very very very bad. It seemed to me that Telkom ‘can run but they can’t hide’ – and that the ICASA hearing provided a good example that Telkom’s actions are catching up with them.
Debbie2
Edit: I wrote this post this afternoon while offline (can't afford to be online during the day) and only posted it this evening. As a result, I repeated much of what morebroadband said - but this is good because it seems we got very similar impressions. I also want to add that an issue that repeatedly came up was the lack of transparency from Telkom - again and again this was revisited. Wash, rinse, repeat indeed!
but you can count on me to help carry your bed. Let's show them unity.