Let's drop the line rental

What difference does it make whether the "base" cost as you put it - is charged by Telkom, or the ISP?

This is my point. I'd rather pay Telkom the "Base" cost. Currently a 192k is already R270 per month. Whether you call it "Base" fee, or "line rental" makes no difference.

The fact is that with the line rental paid to Telkom, it has to go through ICASA and the regulatory process for pricing. When it gets "hidden" somewhere in the ISP fee, it will lead to chaos, and price gouging. The way it is now, it's pretty transparent.

The fact is, that even with your proposal there is still a "line rental".

So what is your point?
 
By charging for line rental separately from ISP charges Telkom deliberately confuses the total cost of ADSL and where the costs lie.

My point is that by dropping this fee-for-nothing, we'll halve the cost of ADSL without hurting anyone. People seem to forget about their line rental, and spend all their time hunting for an ISP that can undercut the rest by R10. This is exactly what Telkom wants.

With my proposal there is no line rental separate from phone line rental. There is a DSLAM port to rent, network infrastructure to rent, IP backbones to rent, etc. These are all complex but low costs that the ISP should be charged with. And they already are.

The fact is that with the line rental paid to Telkom, it has to go through ICASA and the regulatory process for pricing.
Click to expand...

Regulated all the way down to R270 / month for 192k! Score. Seriously, ICASA mainly just gets in the way. If anything the ISPs are better at handling Telkom because they are truly independent and can afford lawyers.
 
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LOL RoDent is a Telkom spy LOL!!

Prehaps a real world example convince people of the validity of RoDents argument.

In New Zealand (not the broadband capital of the world but a country that SA "should" be able to compete with not only on the rugby field but also in broadband.) you pay $10/month (R45) for your telephone line rental.

If you get adsl for a 2 mbps line you pay $39/month (R180). This includes your 1st GB of data. If you use more their are various ways of paying for it but in general you pay $1/GB (R4.50/GB). So in effect $38 of you monthly charge is a "Line rental". It just happens to be charged via your isp rather than the telco.
 
Rental over the top

I just got my phone account:

Line rental (ex V.A.T.) R499.37
Line Usage: R166.10

I think that rental sucks. I run a small pc repair business and have shifted as many of my phone calls to Skype, Messenger (both MSN and Yahoo) and have cut my usage account from around R700.00/month. I think line rental should be abolished.

Tracey
 
I do agree that the ADSL line rental costs are overly priced but i dont believe they should be discarded alltogether.

In my personal oppinion i am perfectly happy to pay the extra ADSl line rental purely for the fact that I am getting an additional service of broadband internet including the fact that i can also phone on the line. The only problem i have is the price of the second rental.

In another light i would support something along the lines of one rental cost but it being more expensive than a normal line E.g R150 for a 192 ADSL line.
 
Well Telkom created their own market. They've made people believe that they are selling them a "Mercedes", but since people here have never seen a "Merc" they simply took a 1990's Merc, took out all the extras (aircon, abs and even the seats), made the engine only use Telkom's "expensive" fuel and sell it for the price of a New "Merc". Now they can justify "New" Unshaped ADSL for gamers and P2P.

Pretty much what the car market did a few years ago - look at the old 1980 Chico's selling for +R90 000. Now they can justify selling a new R80 000 (Look at the Australian prices) Polo for selling at R136 000 and make a lot more profit.
 
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The trouble with arguing that line rental should be lowered but not dropped altogether is that you leave "lowered" open to interpretation and ultimately nothing happens.

Telkom must reduce the end-user's line rental to a very specific value - R0,00 - and pass port / network rental costs on to the ISP instead, or just have them admit that they're already doing that anyway through their inflated wholesale prices.

This is also a future-proof policy. What happens when one day the exchanges are opened and ISPs can install their own DSLAMs and link them to their own networks? Would it still make sense to pay Telkom ADSL line rental in addition to phone line rental?
 
ICASA has recommended the abolishment of the ADSL line rental fee as stated in their ADSL report. Enough said.
 
TheRoDent said:
We've been through this argument before. Even in other countries, the line charge exists. It's just levied by the ISP's not the Telco.

The fact is that DSLAMs cost money. Running DSLAMs costs money. Running Cisco gear to terminate the PPP session forwarded by the DSLAM costs money. Running an ATM backbone to connect all the DSLAMs costs money.

There's no way the line rental can, or should ever be dropped. It is a stupid idea. Yes, line rental can come down, much more. But it can never be entirely removed.

What we really need to focus on, is the cost of bandwidth. That is where Telkom is killing us.
Click to expand...

'line rental' is pure bs. In the UK you pay a monthly fee for your adsl connection - this is not 'line rental' it's the cost of your ADSL service. (uncapped or not - depending on your ISP). For the most part in the UK ISP's either go the whole kit and caboodle and offer 'unbundled' lines or they resell BT adsl lines (you need to have a BT line and simply pay the normal phone line rental for this option) ; the cost of which includes the hardware and network maintenance costs.

See the link below for those all inclusive wholesale costs:

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=2453
 
my 2c

Abroad you pay more for a faster connection. Reason being is over seas you are not capped therefor faster line means more bandwidth required. The extra fee is not because it costs more to have a faster line, the extra fee is purely bandwidth.

Telkom chances their arm by charging an "Access fee" which changes according to speed. A DSLAM wether it be a 192K port or 1Mbps port is the same thing. and to still charge you R90pm for the last mile cable (line rental) over and above the "access charge" is stupid. I would be prepared to pay for a line rental for what it is, the line to my house and maintenance of that line and a flat rate access fee, preferably bundeled into my ISP cost, which is 100% independant of what speed they are going to set it to.

Odviously when more services such as ADSL2+ become available the DSLAMS change and a different charge can be levied for eith ADSL or ADSL2+ but at the moment we only have ADSL and a standard DSLAM with does not give a damn wether it is set to 64kbps or 2mbps!
 
From the letter Telkom sent out to subscribers (as an image file!) posted on the "Telkom Internet finally informs customers of 1st of November changes. 23 Days late!" thread:-

"Next year will see the introduction of a range of services for those subscribers who would prefer a stand-alone usage-based service."

Is this Telkomspeak for no line rental?
 
Standalone...

Standalone in Telkomspeak probably means "the customer stands alone"... "we won't provide support"... "we'll leave you out in the cold"... etc. Which is pretty much what is happening... ha ha
 
Standalone I would guess it you have no cap but have to sell your house at months end to pay for usage. Just like a phone bill u will have a bandwidth bill.
 
The way it is: I pay telkom three times:

once for line rental: 80.95
twice for line rental: 314.91!
and three times as my isp.
Sick or what?

"Your telephone line" R80.95 - It is this telephone line that carries my dsl service - this is the wonder of dsl - broadband delivered over legacy copper (who would have thought.) The network has been paid for a million times over. Now I can understand dsl needs some equipment and there is a cost in running that equipment - some companies would consider this an investment - written off over many years - not paid for over and over again by the consumer - my installation fee of R400 should pay for this. Plus the maintenance costs, plus the upkeep costs - this is not a monthly fee of R350 (inclu tax!) over and over every single month... what a sick joke. When I consider the 12000! odd rand over this last year in telkom costs I am sick to my gut.

And even further - every single isp in this country - no matter the power of their marketing department is doing telkom the favour of signing clients to dsl - so telkom can stick those clients R314 a month in line rental fee - when the people already have a telephone and already pay a line rental fee - what a vicious circle. Telkom misses the whole point of dsl - and the telephone system - by practising digital apartheid... by continuing the jackboot practices of the former regime of discouraging communication through prohibitive costs (so the poor people couldn't afford phones, and perhaps plot against them) - (divide and rule.) And nothing has changed. Yes we have one of the highest penetrations of celphones - why - because people want to be in touch or at least be contactable... ergo, 90 percent of the population is on pay-as-you-go (they don't qualify for contracts) - and they seldom use their phones. All this is bad for business (telemarketing is a real cost)...and bad for education and global competiveness and a million other things.

once upon a time it used to be a pleasure to use the phone (now telkom has to beg us.)

there is zero penetration of landlines in this country - compared to what it should be - to support a healthy economy - if people can communicate they can do business - telkom makes communication difficult... telkom is a fat leech sucking the blood of the people of south africa - and should be done away with immediately as a legacy of the apartheid regime.

as you can see - I can go on in-finitum about the evils of telkom (I haven't even started yet).

how can any isp hope to compete or offer any kind of decent product when telkom has the network by the scrotum? Anybody notice the fewer ads for the wonders of dsl lately - get dsl only R145 a month - what a joke + uhm excuse me there is also a monthly charge of R350 !!! Is this false advertising or what?

Telkom the business killer.

and the typical telkom employee? nice people - and I have a few times been been bailed out by telkom tech support at 3am in the morning - but the heart of the beast is rotten. Continuing the practices learnt through our former regime - and encouraged by massive profit taking which results in massive inflows to the government - company tax, sales tax - and supposed benefit to the public company of telkom... make no mistake - every telco in the world would like to get away with what telkom does - but every telco in the world has been forced to change - either through direct government action or indirect action in opening the market in some other way - and taking the local monopolies death grip off the network - for the benefit of free trade, competition and joy to the consumer - the heart of the capitalist system.

As to the rest: I pay for 3 gigs - I only use 1.5 - joy to telkom. They already charge me twice (2 line rentals) - now I must pay them as my isp for bandwidth I don't use in the first place... why is nobody listening - why does nobody get it - besides us the users?

I'll stop now. Sorry for the long post.

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