No Hope.

[SoulSe]

The big problem is that dealing with telkom is on a consensual basis. Pay their prices or do without. They are not forcing anybody to use their services.

If you take into account the amount of computers in this country and the amount of people that are able to pay, you'll notice that these numbers are rather low compared to our US counterparts.

If telkom has the right to charge what they like, then we should have a right to provide our own alternative services.

so if everybody here would stop talking crap and have 1000s of posts and just get together and rent some satellite space and an uplink from the states and we could all chip in and buy dishes, that would solve all the problems.

At this stage talk is so cheap. ADSL is getting worse and worse and slower and more expensive all the time. so take it or find an alternative. everybody knows this already.

Your proposition, as has been pointed out, is illegal! Perhaps you should find out more about the situation.. then apply that energy to some legal plans of action

 

[Highflyer_GP]

somehow i seem to think that telcum is acting as any monopoly would if they were protected under law. the real problem seems to be the law makers and their shares in said monopoly. it therefore comes as no surprise that telcum is full of praises for the current telecommunications act, and DoC taking their sweet time in opening up the market.

if carte blanche or special assignment or 3rd degree were to do a feature, it would have to be on conflict of interest regarding government. government would also have shares in SNO so that wouldn't help much as well. hopefully the convergence bill would open the market up a bit more, but with terms such as "managed liberalisation" and renaming ICASA to ECASA its not looking as if we making any progress.

the thing is that there is simply so much to educate the public on that it cannot simply be done in a 15 minute insert on a TV program. the only solution would be a free market either by LLU, or SAT3 cable declared an essential national asset, or both. the sooner government realises this, and actually implements it, the sooner we can move forward. but then again - conflict of interest. they all acknowledge the ridiculous telecomms costs, and all talk that something needs to be done, however there's no action to go with this hot air.

 

[SoulSe]

somehow i seem to think that telcum is acting as any monopoly would if they were protected under law. the real problem seems to be the law makers and their shares in said monopoly. it therefore comes as no surprise that telcum is full of praises for the current telecommunications act, and DoC taking their sweet time in opening up the market.

if carte blanche or special assignment or 3rd degree were to do a feature, it would have to be on conflict of interest regarding government. government would also have shares in SNO so that wouldn't help much as well. hopefully the convergence bill would open the market up a bit more, but with terms such as "managed liberalisation" and renaming ICASA to ECASA its not looking as if we making any progress.

the thing is that there is simply so much to educate the public on that it cannot simply be done in a 15 minute insert on a TV program. the only solution would be a free market either by LLU, or SAT3 cable declared an essential national asset, or both. the sooner government realises this, and actually implements it, the sooner we can move forward. but then again - conflict of interest. they all acknowledge the ridiculous telecomms costs, and all talk that something needs to be done, however there's no action to go with this hot air.

Very good points... the problem is bigger than just the consumer and bigger than just telkom, but they are contributors. As you said, any company given the freedom that Telkom has to rape the consumer would do the same thing. You give them carte blanche to do what they like, let them trade on the stock exchange and make it law that no competitors are allowed - obviously they will abuse that position.

ICASA are supposed to make sure this doesn't happen, but their pockets are lined with Telkom pennies. Same goes for government and Miss. Poison Ivy hasn't done jack to effect any change.

One thing that has happened is that Telkom has been given a lot of flack over pricing and that has to change drastically - I would like to take back what I said about the 1st of November, I now have reason to believe that while the mechanics may seem stupid, the final effects of the changes might be price reduction... I think we may just be celebrating come November. I have it on good authority that there will be an uncapped connection available from Telkom then, but the price is anybody's guess.

We'll have to wait and see. As for the SNO, I still maintain that they'll just jerk each other off, like Vodacom and MTN. Our cellular providers just mutually agree to rape the consumer together - so much for competition being the answer!

No, the SNO is not the answer to our problems, proper legislation and managment from government or a truly independant authority (not the toothless ICASA) is the answer.

Spain has a similar predicament not long ago. Their government solved the problem by opening the market completely. They said, "We're dropping all legislation. Want a slice of our telecomms market? Come get it." After a long free-for-all period of companies kniving each other in the streets, things settled down and Spain now has super connectivity from a variety of very progressive providers at very reasonable prices.

It's not that hard, but our systems here are tied up so tight in red tape that it will take years to unravel.

 

[R4tt3xx]

Spain has a similar predicament not long ago. Their government solved the problem by opening the market completely. They said, "We're dropping all legislation. Want a slice of our telecomms market? Come get it." After a long free-for-all period of companies kniving each other in the streets, things settled down and Spain now has super connectivity from a variety of very progressive providers at very reasonable prices.

It's not that hard, but our systems here are tied up so tight in red tape that it will take years to unravel.

Interesting point. Ivy has the power to bring that to pass, just read the telecoms act

 

[ettubrute]

Another interesting bit of news about Spain's telecoms: they put in a bit now to take over the Dutch Telecom company KPN! So, the dropping of legislation really worked well for the Spanish!