Landmark year envisaged for telecoms

Fair enough, not third world, thats the frustration levels talking. One must be surely forgiven for thinking that we are third world when looking at our telecoms costs and allocations. ;)

Im not jabbing at the cell companies directly as they have done a great job.
I have passed down 3 of my previous handsets to my maid and her kids and they all have prepaid. Great. There are costs within that network that need to be reviewed and quickly though and if I understand it correctly the interconnection costs are a very contentious issue.
Poverty, be it caused by the appartheid regime or because my dog never took a dump, it makes no difference, our 'appartheid by Telkom' isnt doing us any favours.
 
Ha!

I am laughing at JStrikes comment... given the circumstances the cell companies have done a brilliant job... you're telling me... MTN has grown some lately. It's incredible... the amount they spend on marketing, etc... all financed by cell phone users. They have convinced the public that a cell phone is as essential as eating... It's all pretty irresponsible if you ask me.. especially as they are making a mint off our kids and the poor... just like telkom.
 
EdRobinson : You are laughing at me? That is exactly what I am talking about. Whatever the reason, they have managed to do it
 
However you look at it (unless you have incredibly low expectations), we are now truly and officially "in the sticks" when it comes to connectivity. I have colleagues in Europe and the US who do free video-conferencing with each other using Skype over dirt-cheap low-end ADSL connections, while I literally cannot even have a plain voice conversation here over Skype with someone in the same city over my ADSL connection --- and I pay over five times the price they do! Open your eyes to what the rest of the world has, we are 'in the bush'. We're backwards. We're far behind, and falling further. We have dropped from around 30th in the world in terms of connectivity to about 45th in just five or ten years (way WAY below our GDP ranking), and we are still literally just free-sliding downwards in that ranking. We're one of only a very tiny handful of countries that actually decreased their fixed line teledensity (in both absolute and percentage terms) over the last ten years.

I don't see how a tiny decrease in prices for a small percentage of users (balanced against a huge increase in price for many other users, especially business users) really means anything positive when the products are 1000% overpriced to begin with, and Telkom's own costs have dropped significantly during the same time.

JStrike may say "well at least we're moving forward", but frankly it really is just not good enough to be moving forward at speed X when the rest of the world is moving forward at speed 10X - as you say "it's all relative", and relative to the rest of the world, we're going backwards.
 
I dont know about the rest of the world, but to the few people from the US or AUS that i regularly chat with Telkom's one giant joke. All I have to do to entertain them is to tell them the truth about telkom and trying to stay online in SA. It took them a while to realize that I was being serious. That's going to be Poison Ivy's legacy. An overweight, mentally challenged clown that turned SA into the world's telecom's joke. A bloody chimp could be trained to do a better job than her.
 
i am cautiously optimistic about the year

i think there will be significant movement in the liberalisation of the regulatory framework, especially around local and district networks and municipalities - ths will kick off with an announcement in the next 2 weeks

the minister will resign and be replaved in June 2006

the reorientation of icasa into a more consumer-focused entity will continue leading to strained relationships at national level....this will have a trickle-down effect to the provincial branches of icasa whoch remain staffed with people whose mentality and origins lie with telkom

there will be greater intra-industry organisation & sef-regulation

this will be balanced by telkom increasingly digging its heels in and resisting change - this will more and more lead to the alienation of the company and increasing recognition amongst consumers as to how they and the country is being ripped off...telkom's share price will fall and by the end of 2006 it will have become tarnished brand
 
dominic said:
i am cautiously optimistic about the year

i think there will be significant movement in the liberalisation of the regulatory framework, especially around local and district networks and municipalities - ths will kick off with an announcement in the next 2 weeks

the minister will resign and be replaved in June 2006

the reorientation of icasa into a more consumer-focused entity will continue leading to strained relationships at national level....this will have a trickle-down effect to the provincial branches of icasa whoch remain staffed with people whose mentality and origins lie with telkom

there will be greater intra-industry organisation & sef-regulation

this will be balanced by telkom increasingly digging its heels in and resisting change - this will more and more lead to the alienation of the company and increasing recognition amongst consumers as to how they and the country is being ripped off...telkom's share price will fall and by the end of 2006 it will have become tarnished brand
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I hope you're right... just don't expect the Government to sit back and let Telkom take what they deserve... they are a highly protected species.
 
the minister will resign and be replaved in June 2006
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All of this should have been done last year (or was it the year before?) So we continue waiting, waiting and getting steadily poorer (in tech and finance) :mad:
A bloody chimp could be trained to do a better job than her.
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No training required :mad:
We're one of only a very tiny handful of countries that actually decreased their fixed line teledensity (in both absolute and percentage terms) over the last ten years
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Oh thank you telkom :mad:
Happy New Year from the most backward 1st world, 3rd world country in the world - we should all move to India - or Somalia :mad:
 
We can have all the changes under the sun taking place, but if our government doesnt tackle the root cause of the problem headon (Telkom) we might as well not be doing anything, really.
Whatever progress that is made is nullified by Telkoms repositioning, or a Dominic puts it, digging their heals in and resistance to change while Lulu Wetlappie and co preach success from the Telkom towers.

Its high time that they be taken to task DIRECTLY by the only institution that can do anything about it, the DoC. All the other progress is really great, but why the DoC seems to sidestep the root cause is beyond me. Makes you think that they actually support it, at least that is the perception that is emitted.

We get further and further behind every day and at the pace at which we are moving we cannot hope to bridge any gaps.
 
Come on guys, let's all chip in and buy Ivy a retirement present! Maybe she will get the hint (although I seriously doubt it)
 
Sneeky said:
but if our government doesnt tackle the root cause of the problem headon (Telkom) we might as well not be doing anything
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Government is the root cause of the problem, since while it's the DoC's job (and mandate) to create a free market, they have seemingly deliberately done just the opposite, vigorously defending and extending Telkom's monopoly (while raking in hundreds of millions in dividends) as long as they could, and in fact they still haven't opened up the market in any meaningful way after nine years.

The bottom line in SA is that we need a free market. Telkom literally couldn't achieve that even if they wanted to - only the DoC really has the power to do that, yet they have been preventing it from happening, in fact in many ways one could even say they've actively engineered and fostered the current situation. The responsibility rests entirely with them - nobody else in the country has the power to liberalise the market.

Telkom is only a symptom of the real problem - no free market. Truly open up the market and Telkom will naturally fall in line like a good little boy.
 
no doubt, thats the real problem. The gov prob like that every one is annoyed at telkom when infact the real people behind it is the gov. I mean sure telkom is making life expensive.. but the greater wrong is the gov whom represents the people of the country and refuse to do anything whilst filling their pockets regardless of how they sugar coat it and say it pays for this and that program.
 
We're one of only a very tiny handful of countries that actually decreased their fixed line teledensity (in both absolute and percentage terms) over the last ten years
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Is this genuine? Anyone able to back this fact? I wouldn't be surprised, but it would be something for the local paper to write about... average joe shareholder may bee interested.
 
EdRobinson said:
Is this genuine? Anyone able to back this fact? I wouldn't be surprised, but it would be something for the local paper to write about... average joe shareholder may bee interested.
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It's actually old news, sadly nobody cares, least of all government:
http://link.wits.ac.za/papers/tspr2003.pdf
"From a perspective of promoting universality, the strategy to boost telephone penetration through the granting of a five-year exclusivity to Telkom in exchange for the doubling of the network has not produced the desired outcome. In South Africa, fixed-line teledensity currently stands at 11% and fixed-line household penetration at an estimated 31%. At the time of its privatisation and granting of exclusivity in 1997, Telkom was given mandatory service obligations to install 2.69 million new lines. During the next five years Telkom installed 2.8 million new lines but only 665,819 of these lines remain connected to end users, resulting in overall fixed line network penetration falling in the last three years of the exclusivity period up to 2002. Price increases way beyond what was anticipated by rate rebalancing, have contributed to this dire situation. Charges have increased by more than 27% on average a year and the cost of a local call is now almost five times what it was in 1996. The net effect of this is that more than 2 million lines, or more than 75% of the licence obligation for network expansion, are not connected to subscribers. Moreover, even these figures mask the actual penetration rate for residential subscriber service. Of the 4.9 million fixed lines in operation in South Africa in 2002, 467,518 were ISDN lines, 195,399 were pay-phones, and 707,881 were pre-paid fixed lines. ISDN lines are really substitute lines to provide additional capacity for advanced services for existing subscribers and while recent increases in payphones and prepaid fixed lines are commendable, they help disguise the fact that subscriber fixed lines declined by 10% to 3.6 million in 2002 (Melody, 2002). It is possible that there are now fewer residential subscriber fixed line customers than there were in 1997.
As a result, while fixed line growth is slowing internationally, South Africa is now one of a handful of countries worldwide with a declining fixed line teledensity."
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That article is full of other interesting stats and graphs.

I recall seeing other figures somewhere recently showing a drop from 5.something million fixed lines to 4.something million, but can't remember where.

Around nine years ago, government granted Telkom a five-year monopoly in exchange for installing millions of lines in previously disadvantaged areas. Telkom installed the lines but hiked their prices so badly nobody could afford them and then they disconnected most of those lines again. Government looked the other way. After the five years was up, Telkom's monopoly was "de facto" protected for a further four years by the Department of Communication's resistance to their mandate of liberalising the market. Now we have one single lone "competitor"* (or at least will around a year from now when they properly get up and running) but DoC gave Telkom another two years on the local loop, continuing monopoly on SAT-3, and it remains up to Ivy to decide if/when anyone else gets any kind of telecomms licenses. (Note that guys like Andile Ngcaba - former DG of the communications ministry recently "personally enriched to the tune of well over one billion rand" (see http://antitrust.co.za/hellkom/video/feisty_ivy.mpg) when Thintana sold their Telkom shares - actually helped create the legislation that gave Telkom its monopoly. Just seems like this whole situation was engineered, doesn't it? Lyndall Shope-Malofe was recently here uncomfortably pushed into admitting that DoC deliberately created extended monopoly conditions in order to pump the stock price: http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=983 ("Why were we protecting Telkom? [It was] so that we could get big value for it because it was going [public on the stock market]"))

* The SNO, who've already stated publicly that they will try as hard as possible to avoid engaging in a price war with Telkom.
 
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