ICASA Presentation

Yes great presentation rpm, very very good..

As for that Markinor survey - I would take that with a pinch of salt the size of Texas. Although if I have a poduct which is a complete ripoff I may ask them to do a survey for me.
 
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To avoid being accused as... well whatever (again)... this is just criticisim, nothing more.

I would like to state that I disagree with Rudolph's "solutions"

While the statements in the presentation may be true, I fear that the tunnel vision approach of "Force Telkom to lower prices" will be damaging to the market which should be opened to competition (This is not impossible, they just have to DO IT). All end "web users" see is the price they are paying and this cannot be addressed naively, as much as we can force SAB to give us free beer! While this would be great, it sets a very negative market precident.

Maintenance (labour) of the DSLAM equipment is also not taken into account in the arguments - something Telkom will most likely use as defence.

Of course, I couldn't be there (since I'm in Durban and have a business to run) so make of it what you will.
 
Karnaugh said:
To avoid being accused as... well whatever (again)... this is just criticisim, nothing more.

I would like to state that I disagree with Rudolph's "solutions"

While the statements in the presentation may be true, I fear that the tunnel vision approach of "Force Telkom to lower prices" will be damaging to the market which should be opened to competition (This is not impossible, they just have to DO IT). All end "web users" see is the price they are paying and this cannot be addressed naively, as much as we can force SAB to give us free beer! While this would be great, it sets a very negative market precident.

Maintenance (labour) of the DSLAM equipment is also not taken into account in the arguments - something Telkom will most likely use as defence.

Of course, I couldn't be there (since I'm in Durban and have a business to run) so make of it what you will.
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eeehhhmmm... you are pretty alone with your opinion but this is freedom of speech...
 
Karnaugh said:
Maintenance (labour) of the DSLAM equipment is also not taken into account in the arguments - something Telkom will most likely use as defence.
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Maintenance on local lead (copper) is covered by your COMPULSORY normal line rental. Maintenance on the DSLAM is marginal. Its all new(ish) kit, and most vendors charge about 8% of capex per annum for maintenance. Now if they can offer DSLAM access for R330 per month on the 192k service, then they are saying that the increased cost on 512k is on the network access side. Now, on the network access side, they use THEIR lines and ATM routers. Again, these ATM routers/switches are used by all packages on ADSL that they offer, which implies that the extra cost associated with the 512k service is purely bandwidth related (plus a very marginal cost for extra ports etc on the atm device/router). Now, like I said, its THEIR lines. all their pricing seems to implicate that the costs associated with ADSL are backhaul line/bandwidth related, which is total rubbish in my opinion.
My feelings on this are as follows :
a. Telkom are using ADSL customers to pay for their ATM backbone by charging exhorbitant fees.
b. This enables them to offer substantially reduced fees on their MPLS network (which uses the same backbone)
c. The reduced fees on the MPLS network enable them to shut out competition from IS, UUNET, UCS etc etc by means of aggressive pricing.
d. They are protecting their voice market - because although there will be free interbranch calling on MPLS for corporates, Telkom are still maintaining their revenue.

So, in essence, you are paying through your a*** for adsl so that Telkom can be more competitive in other areas, and large corporates on their network are making "free" calls, that your are ultimately paying for.
This REALLY SUX!!!!!
 
Thanks for pointing that out, I guess that proves my statement about the maintaince very wrong, and as I said I don't debate that the Telkoms DSLAM rental charge is questionable.

I still feel that forcing Telkom to do this through even more legislation is a rash idea. I don't like police states, forgive me.

If consumers had to wait for government - specifically the DoC to get their act together and introduce competition, it would take several more years of paying exorbitant costs for an outdated ADSL service...
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While thats true - perhaps if the same pressure was placed on the government, they would speed up removing the legislation. It didnt take that long to allow gay marriages - I don't see what slows down opening up the PSTN head ends and allowing competition.
 
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Hi Karnaugh

Thanks for the feedback.

The full argument will be somewhat more complicated than my simple statement of ‘remove line rental’, but in the limited time I had to achieve a fair amount. The full solution will be to ensure that all larger ISP’s will have access to the physical infrastructure at cost, which will mean that they can incorporate the DSLAM and maintenance cost in the ISP portion. They can therefore sell a package of 10G for R 450-00, for example, which is an all-inclusive ADSL cost. Since this is a whole new issue (deregulation), the best option in our current monopolistic environment is: “remove line rental’. I think Telkom can certainly afford this and it is therefore an easy and viable option. It will surely shake up the broadband industry, but it is a step in the right direction to ensure cheaper broadband.

Regards,

RPM
 
It's always best to ask for more and get less than to ask for less and get almost nothing. Saying "remove line rental" is drastic, but allows more room for negotiation. If ICASA said to Telkom "you may not charge line rental" and Telkom pleads "But we need something, how about a 50% discount" then that is at least a step forward. If ICASA said "reduce your line rental" then Telkom would respond "Okay, here's R19 off" or something.
Secondly, if DSL was much cheaper, more people would sign up, so the maintenance costs would be divided over a much larger customer base, hence costs would go down drastically (did i just say hence? Frick...) Besides, Telkom already has the capablility to deliver 1Mbps to every household in SA on their ATM network (not sure who said that, but it was Steve White i think) That infrastructure is all optic and was installed years ago. So all this talk about ADSL being high maintenance is crap obviously. How could UK broadband companies charge 10 pounds a month otherwise? There is no way they make a loss, even at that price.
 
More customers generaly means more maintainence and more staff to handle them
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I beg to differ, I have heard personally from Telkom staff that the current ATM network has enough capacity to supply every household in South Africa with a 1 Mbps connection. Now if there is no need to upgrade capacity the maintenance of the ATM network shouldn't increase just because there is more traffic on the network, it's not like light pulses down a fiber optic cable causes wear and tear. As far as I'm aware there is no physical difference in the cable between an ADSL line and an ordinary phoneline so the phoneline rental should cover any maintenance to the copper network, if that isn't the case then I sincerely doubt Telkom would only be charging R80 on an ordinary phoneline if they where losing money. The only are where there would be an increase in costs would be on the installation side and there surely the increase in profits due to more users would more than offset that cost. Clearly Telkom are also not that concerned with helpdesk and accounting staff so there wouldn't be a huge increase there either.
 
Karnaugh said:
While thats true - perhaps if the same pressure was placed on the government, they would speed up removing the legislation. It didnt take that long to allow gay marriages - I don't see what slows down opening up the PSTN head ends and allowing competition.
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Different dynamics. The prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is to be found in the Bill of Rights. Even then it required a challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
 
Excellent Presentation RPM.. everything I could think about was included, and the specific focus on line rental makes alot of sense.

When will a ruling be made by ICASA, did they say how long t would take?
 
Mercury said:
Different dynamics. The prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is to be found in the Bill of Rights. Even then it required a challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
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I personaly feel that communication is also one of our basic human rights, and all companies are being discriminated against by the fact that they are not Telkom.

It's not like light pulses down a fiber optic cable causes wear and tear
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Equipment fails, trees fall down, lightning strikes. Telkoms ATM capacity has nothing to do with this, if they had 100000 more ADSL customers, they would need more DSLAM ports and more people to install lines (or do DSLAM patches), and more people to look after them.

And this is going off topic.
 
quik said:
Excellent Presentation RPM.. everything I could think about was included, and the specific focus on line rental makes alot of sense.

When will a ruling be made by ICASA, did they say how long t would take?
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Hi Quik

Thanks for the kind words. The process should take 6 weeks (after the hearing date). A recommendation will be made by ICASA etc...explained by the chairperson in the radio interview.

Regards,

RPM
 
Very nicely done RPM. I agree that this presentation should find a home on the website in HTML form.
 
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