Interconnect rate battle: Why now?

[grok]

The usual saying is that when elephants fight the grass suffers, who cares why Govt is getting their knickers in a knot over interconnect rates. As long as it benefits the consumer the grass 'might' just welcome such an elephantile fight.

 

[tjunyat]

The usual saying is that when elephants fight the grass suffers, who cares why Govt is getting their knickers in a knot over interconnect rates. As long as it benefits the consumer the grass 'might' just welcome such an elephantile fight.

Not sure about anyone else, but the reason I care why they're getting their knickers in a knot is so that we (as a populous) can implement the same circumstances to force them to bring down broadband costs, electricity costs, etc.
i.e. If the reason they're doing this is because they divested from Vodacom and are invested in Telkom and Telkom is entering the mobile market, then, as the article claims, guavamunt should divest from ALL investments and we might finally get competitive and properly run infrastructure.

 

[HDC]

Why not lower ICF..?

Hmm..read all the posts and one thing seems to be overlooked. The only reason for the high phone penetration in SA is because of the high interconnect fees. High interconnect sponsor low ARPU customers. Have a look anywhere in the world with low interconnect of even no interconnect - India e.g - VERY low phone penetration...

So with all this new "everyone has the right to communications" etc..etc.. what will happen if the network operators start kicking the low ARPU customers off the network since they are actually a burden and a COST to the network to maintain, currently only maintained by the interconnect rate...?

Government and consumer reaction to this should be interesting...

/get's out popcorn to watch the show