Local Loop Unbundling will be useless..

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kaspaas

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Everybody seems to have high hopes for Local Loop Unbundling.

LLU will allow other service providers to rent the copper to the final address (eg home) from Telkom and then offer its own packages to the end user.

Unfortunately it will be useless as long as Telkom has the stranglehold on data lines.

They are charging what they like for these services, and it is not related to any international kind of cost structure I'm aware of.

LLU might increase competition in terms of more packages, but not in terms of real costs.
 
Agreed, the real problem is landing of international bandwidth and allowing people to provide services to customers easily (self provision does not apply to connecting a client afaik).

Also some regulation is needed to ensure that Telkom provides interconnection to competitors - and that competitors are also to provide interconnection to others etc.
 
kaspaas said:
Everybody seems to have high hopes for Local Loop Unbundling.

LLU will allow other service providers to rent the copper to the final address (eg home) from Telkom and then offer its own packages to the end user.

Unfortunately it will be useless as long as Telkom has the stranglehold on data lines.

They are charging what they like for these services, and it is not related to any international kind of cost structure I'm aware of.

LLU might increase competition in terms of more packages, but not in terms of real costs.
Click to expand...

Agreed - the only real options are to have everyone own the cables, or to allow wifi meshes to be set up by individuals.
 
this is where declaring the sat3 cable as an essential public asset would come into place. it wasn't bought using shareholders money, so i dont see why THEY should be reaping its rewards.
 
Karnaugh said:
Agreed, the real problem is landing of international bandwidth and allowing people to provide services to customers easily (self provision does not apply to connecting a client afaik).

Also some regulation is needed to ensure that Telkom provides interconnection to competitors - and that competitors are also to provide interconnection to others etc.
Click to expand...

Currently only Telkom and in future the SNO as well may supply the "cabling" - and they are charging arms & legs for it!
 
LLU is a good step in at least getting competitive LOCAL access. The international portion is being worked on. LLU isn't worthless...
 
LLU would be hugely beneficial. As other have mentioned it would help create a better level of local access.

Additionally it separates Telkom from the actual consumer products, this would mean higher speeds, better contention ratios, cheaper call rates could be offered without having to beg Telkom for years.

The other benefit is that consumers will be dealing with an independent provider, which I believe would greatly increase the amount of honesty when it comes to consumer queries and complaints, it would also make customer service much more important.

Of course LLU will only work if providers have access at sensible rates; otherwise Telkom will just charge insane prices all over again.
 
Why will LLU providers need Telkom? Only for International access via SAT3 and thats all. Sure to call a Telkom land line, they will have to interconnect with Telkom, but those rates are already well regulated by ICASA.

The bulk of the usage for phone calls and data is within South Africa, not overseas. I am including business use for data as companies exchange a lot of data between branches and other companies.

So LLU will make a big difference to costs if the LLU providers do not try make mega profits.

An interesting debate is what technology the local loop should use.
 
LLU would make bandwidth cheaper. Irrespective of who owns what in terms of Datalines. The bigger issue here is Telkom having monopoly to the landing of the SAT-3/SAFE marine infrastructure. Solution (as addresssed by ICASA) is simply: allow ISPs to co-locate at these landings. Even though Telkom and the SNO may have a (duo)mono-poly on the line infrastructure, bandwidth will not be throttled by Telkom/SNO but rather sold primarily by the ISPs. Either way, WiFi and W-Lan technologies can make inroads in SA if bandwidth was cheaper.
 
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