ICASA: Your Feedback Needed

[bwana]

*sigh* No, thats why I say it should be deregulated.





How is that a "free market economy" ? A free market economy implies freedom from government regulation..

Thank you for your time. Please take some more to read my previous posts.

You can’t deregulate a market where the infrastructure is, rightly or wrongly, owned by the incumbent monopoly without intervention.

As ICASA is independent they would be a more suitable body to supervise as opposed to government. On ICASAs website it states - 'It is the policy of the Government of South Africa that all people should have access to basic telecommunications services at affordable prices. The role of ICASA as a regulator is central to achieving this goal.'

A level paying field would be years if not decades away in an unregulated environment and while it benefits telkoms shareholders the general public who cant afford a telephone line loses out.

When you look at the future do you realistically see operators running their own wires? Obviously they’re going to have to share at lease some of the infrastructure or this country is going to become a mass of poles and wires.

 

[Karnaugh]

A level paying field would be years if not decades away

Good time to get started then.

Oh hang on - we cant even do that untill the government deregulates.

 

[reech]

Well either way something's gotta give - looking forward I think we need an assault on 2 fronts:
1. continuing to push ICASA to reign Telkom in, and push for equitable and affordable comms distribution.
2. Start lobbying govt and political parties - demand that they declare where they stand on IT, comms and bandwidth issuesand push govt to have a clear policy for promoting the above andlowering costs.

 

[[)roi(]]

How is that a "free market economy" ? A free market economy implies freedom from government regulation..

I'm not sure it's really it really as straight forward as you put it, e.g. looking at Microsoft: In a so called "free market economy" they would have been praised for their ruthless business tactics, clearly this was not the case, most of us even feel they got off very lightly; so that means we're not a free society, but rather a society of laws and regulations, without these we'd have anarchy and simply in our case no leg to stand on in a fight about rights with Telkom.

 

[mbs]

I note this thread has derailed into a debate about markets and economic development approaches - and, as usual, the 'free' marketers are as insistent on the 'correctness' of their approach in our context, much like dogmatic missionaries to supposedly religious-ignorant Africa. This very debate was held about a year ago on this forum, with the end-result being much the same as the inevitable result this time: there will be no agreement on the correct approach to adopt...

 

[Debbie]

They are behaving like an excellent business. Just buy some shares!

We really should not bring morality into this. It's not girl scouts, its business - plain and simple. I'm certainly not defending their prices, thats for sure - but you have to be realistic and see the situation for what it is.

Karnaugh, I agree with you to some extent. But I think your analysis is flawed in that Telkom is not acting agressively within the law....Oftentimes, Telkom is making the law. Just take a look at the issues surrounding the price cap since the year 2000 - and this is but a few examples.

I dunno, maybe this does amount to good business practice..... I have trouble accepting that though.

 

[Karnaugh]

Telkom breaking the law? Just what business doesnt?!

Charging high prices isn't againt the law as such, its against ICASA's crazy regulations which most of the time they are not even able to enforce. Infact its the law that keeps them as the monopoly! You should see how many laws your bank breaks every day, and they actualy have propper laws they are supposed to abide by.

I'm familiar with the "price cap" since year 2000, and it resulted in cross subsidisation from other services. Telkom can easily show an "average increase" of whatver by simply decreasing the prices of unused services (like maritine, or teletext or other random things) and pumping up the prices on other stuff, and this has been going on for ages due to price caps and interference from ICASA - now you say more interference is going to help this?

 

[TMoose]

Karnaugh, you obviously have more money than I have. Personally I'd rather see government force Telkom into lower prices now than have to wait 10 years for competition to get going. Personally it sends shivers down my spine to think what calls would have cost by now if it had not been for regulation. Once the SNO is on its feet the government can start thinking of deregulation, but until then I think its better that they're there to cap price increases.

 

[Karnaugh]

Of course you'd rather see government to force Telkom to lower prices - who wouldnt?

The thing is, we cannot be so naive to demand this, because it has incredibly negative side effects that have been whitnessed in many instances (One good example is rent control, which resulted in the many derelict and ugly buildings we have in SA). To make the same mistakes again, would be purely ignorant.

I'm not sure liberation would take that long personaly - if people got off their asses about it. What is the government doing?

It's capping of price increases that has lead to this problem as it is, through cross subsidisation and other dirty trics - the provebial "5.5% average increase" that Telkom proclaim each year "in line with inflation" While they pump up telephony 50% and other random things, which are almost unused, down 45% and run to ICASSA "Look daddy, we only increased everything by 5%".

The main point is, if we *ever* want competition then price caps will probably remove all hope of that, and set a very bad precident of government controll - a market which no one will want to enter.

 

[TMoose]

Don't get me wrong, I understand perfectly what you're saying, its just that I don't believe the situation in SA as it is now lends itself to de-regulation. Once competition is introduced the prices will regulate itself and then I'll be all for it, but as it stands now I believe that Telkom would have announced giant price increases had it not been for regulation up to this point.