Let the deal happen

As long as Telkom keeps their grubby paws off MTN, then they should proceed.

And as long as it benefit the consumer with lower prices and better service as well...

...but if it's to create a monopoly, nononono...
 
I see a bad monoply arising!! I see trouble on the way
 
The deal would give Vodafone ... management control of Vodacom and allow it to compete more aggressively with Telkom in providing fixed-line communications.
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HU? Fixed line? I did not know Vodacom had such a license. Methinks wool is most certainly over eyes. If MTN purchase teklom, then that argument holds, and Voda will become completely islanded, 100% reliant on the fixed line license holders to survive. THIS IS BAD.

Both MTN and Vodacom have begun laying fibre-optic cables to compete with Telkom.
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Suddenly I learn something new .. when did this happen? Damn ... keep up STOKE! Grrrrr!

Well, okay, in that case, seeing as everybody has the right to lay cable except for me, well then it should be kewl, the stranglehold is lifted, and now it's just a case of .. well ... who wants to do the last mile stuff?

I vote that small companies do the last mile stuff.
 
stoke said:
HU? Fixed line? I did not know Vodacom had such a license. Methinks wool is most certainly over eyes. If MTN purchase teklom, then that argument holds, and Voda will become completely islanded, 100% reliant on the fixed line license holders to survive. THIS IS BAD.

Suddenly I learn something new .. when did this happen? Damn ... keep up STOKE! Grrrrr!

Well, okay, in that case, seeing as everybody has the right to lay cable except for me, well then it should be kewl, the stranglehold is lifted, and now it's just a case of .. well ... who wants to do the last mile stuff?

I vote that small companies do the last mile stuff.
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Voda has no license but Iburst does.:)
 
stoke said:
Suddenly I learn something new .. when did this happen? Damn ... keep up STOKE! Grrrrr!
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This has been in the pipeline for more then 8months - only thing is we just dont see it. there was a post about 2 weeks ago about this on mybroadband
 
antowan said:
I think this is a bad idea.
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It does have one upside. The SA govt will no longer hold a financial interest in the country's fixed line assets to any meaningful degree.
 
doesnt govt own a portion of mtn ? think i recall something like they own 39% of telkom and through that 25% of voda and 5% mtn or some such thing.

also, what on earth will we do if a tsunami hits?? i mean how on earth will the govt inform us of what is going on and what to do if they dont own the telcos????
 
I don't like it one little bit.

If it does happen what will Telkom do with all that moolah? Use some of the spare change to buy Neotel?

More companies is better. More and more and more.
 
The only problem is Vodacom will still be reliant on Telkom infrastructure for quite a while, which means MTN would have quite an incentive to delay installation, cause problems for them etc.
 
This is a very bad idea!

Not sure if this is true or not cause I heard it from my friend but his dad used to setup base stations and the like for MTN in Nigeria and as some of you might know MTN has the largest stake in Nigeria.

Before other operators started operating there they apparently did things like charge almost R2000 for a basic prepaid starter pack (The kind you buy for R10 here). As I said I don't know if there's any truth to it but I do know if they buy Telkom then we essentially have a bigger Monopoly than before! (instead of only Telkom, we have a huge African/Middle East mobile provider + Telkom as one company)
 
Why would MTN want to buy the fixed-line business when it is going to be unbundled by 2011? Why buy a business where they have to look after 20 or more km of wire and zillion of poles for a line to farmer?
However Telkom media will require phone lines so my guess is that MTN wants a monopoly of the distribution infrastructure of subscription services.
 
I dont want Vodafone to take over Vodacom... Will they?
 
JK8 said:
Voda has no license but Iburst does.:)
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Say what :confused:

Qualified statement required there...
stoke said:
I vote that small companies do the last mile stuff.
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iBurst is a small company, but look at what an abomination the shaped-to-death iBurst service is...

BTW, what's up with iBurst, it used to be WBS, then changed its name to iBurst, but lately it seems it might have changed its name back to WBS...
Syndyre said:
The only problem is Vodacom will still be reliant on Telkom infrastructure for quite a while, which means MTN would have quite an incentive to delay installation, cause problems for them etc.
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Yep, I've been saying that and other stuff for quite a while now.

This is what I think is going to happen [not necessarily in this order]:
  • Telkodemonopolies will have to sell part or all of its 50% of Vodacom: probably as suggested by the media, 15% will be bought by Vodafone, and the remainder by BEE entities;
  • Vodacom will then want to buy the fibre optic backhaul links it currently rents from Telkodemonopolies - as well as demand unbundled access to those links within Telkodemonopolies exchanges - provided that ATM backhaul is still provided for a negotiable period of time per link - to give Vodacom time to interconnect between 'unbundled' exchange buildings;
  • MTN will also want to buy the fibre optic backhaul links it currently rents from Telkodemonopolies - similar unbundling rules of engagement apply as mentioned above for Vodacom;
  • MTN will also attempt to buy a slice of Telkodemonopolies' SAT-3 shareholding to satisfy MTN's short-term international bandwidth requirements, Vodafone might attempt to do the same leveraging its multi-national power to negotiate with the SAT-3 bandwidth illuminati consortium.
  • MTN will not buy into Telkodemonopolies' traditional POTS network, but will be one of many companies pushing for extensive Local Loop Unbundling.
 
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ic said:
Yep, I've been saying that and other stuff for quite a while now.
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Yeah I think you were the one that mentioned it first. :)

ic said:
This is what I think is going to happen [not necessarily in this order]:
  • Telkodemonopolies will have to sell part or all of its 50% of Vodacom: probably as suggested by the media, 15% will be bought by Vodafone, and the remainder by BEE entities;
  • Vodacom will then want to buy the fibre optic backhaul links it currently rents from Telkodemonopolies - as well as demand unbundled access to those links within Telkodemonopolies exchanges - provided that ATM backhaul is still provided for a negotiable period of time per link - to give Vodacom time to interconnect between 'unbundled' exchange buildings;
  • MTN will also want to buy the fibre optic backhaul links it currently rents from Telkodemonopolies - similar unbundling rules of engagement apply as mentioned above for Vodacom;
  • MTN will also attempt to buy a slice of Telkodemonopolies' SAT-3 shareholding to satisfy MTN's short-term international bandwidth requirements, Vodafone might attempt to do the same leveraging its multi-national power to negotiate with the SAT-3 bandwidth illuminati consortium.
  • MTN will not buy into Telkodemonopolies' traditional POTS network, but will be one of many companies pushing for extensive Local Loop Unbundling.
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How feasible would it be to buy the links like that and effectively break up the network if its all one integrated network with other leased line customers etc?

Whether or not MTN buys Telkom's traditional POTS network probably depends on what they find out from ICASA/DOC regarding LLU, it would be quite a valuable resource if LLU doesn't happen soon and even if it does it would probably take at least 18-24 months if not longer which would give MTN quite a bit of time to entrench themselves and perhaps leapfrog past Vodacom's current data lead by offering a combined mobile/fixed solution possible triple play with IPTV etc.
 
Syndyre said:
Whether or not MTN buys Telkom's traditional POTS network probably depends on what they find out from ICASA/DOC regarding LLU, it would be quite a valuable resource if LLU doesn't happen soon and even if it does it would probably take at least 18-24 months if not longer which would give MTN quite a bit of time to entrench themselves and perhaps leapfrog past Vodacom's current data lead by offering a combined mobile/fixed solution possible triple play with IPTV etc.
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Telkodemonopolies' POTS infrastructure represents a high maintenance beast with lots of overheads - mainly thousands of employees that the unions will not want retrenched, add to that the fact that POTS revenues are declining [albeit slowly] and alleged imminent competition from NeeTel, and alleged LLU...IMO MTN would be insane to buy into Telkodemonopolies' POTS business - although MTN does hate VoIP, so I could be very wrong, but buying into POTS still doesn't make much business sense to me.
Syndyre said:
How feasible would it be to buy the links like that and effectively break up the network if its all one integrated network with other leased line customers etc?
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Vodacom and MTN and CellC have to own their own fibre optic backhaul links for base-stations in their existing business as well as going forward - otherwise they're simply paying Telkodemonopolies a large percentage of their potential revenue every month.

I suspect Telkodemonopolies' ATM network is the proverbial fly in the ointment, which Vodacom & MTN & CellC would have to bypass by steadily building their own interconnected core network links between 'unbundled' exchange buildings.

Of course I could be completely wrong about all of this, it's just what I think is going to happen...:rolleyes:
 
ic said:
Telkodemonopolies' POTS infrastructure represents a high maintenance beast with lots of overheads - mainly thousands of employees that the unions will not want retrenched, add to that the fact that POTS revenues are declining [albeit slowly] and alleged imminent competition from NeeTel, and alleged LLU...IMO MTN would be insane to buy into Telkodemonopolies' POTS business - although MTN does hate VoIP, so I could be very wrong, but buying into POTS still doesn't make much business sense to me.Vodacom and MTN and CellC have to own their own fibre optic backhaul links for base-stations in their existing business as well as going forward - otherwise they're simply paying Telkodemonopolies a large percentage of their potential revenue every month.

I suspect Telkodemonopolies' ATM network is the proverbial fly in the ointment, which Vodacom & MTN & CellC would have to bypass by steadily building their own interconnected core network links between 'unbundled' exchange buildings.
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Thats why I said their decision is likely to be based on what they know about the LLU process from the DOC/ICASA that us mere mortals don't. Unless they start laying FTTH the POTS network with ADSL2+ is going to be the best connectivity available for a while, whether it'd be worth owning it after LLU all depends on how much the other operators would have to pay to use it and how unbundled it really would be, i.e. whether owning it would still give them a competitive advantage. Considering how toothless ICASA's proven themselves to be it could be quite an advantage, especially if they could structure it so that they buy the physical infrastructure only and aren't bound by union contracts etc, easier said than done though.

I agree they definitely need to own their own backhaul links, I'm just wondering how Telkom's network is set up, if it'd be possible to buy it piece by piece like that or if its too integrated and they'd have to rather run their own fibre to replace Telkom's network entirely. If there's one piece of fibre running from each tower to an exchange then as you said they'd just have to run their own fibre to each exchange and interconnect from there, but if these physical lines are effectively shared by one or more cell networks and various other companies I'm not sure how possible that'd be, but admittedly I know nothing about Telkom's network topology, I'm just speculating.
 
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