stoke said:
This all implies transparency with teklom's actual costs. This is going to be damn near impossible to get out of them. I recon the DOC should let teklom make an offer of what they recon the "at-cost" value is, and then, be forced to prove the "at-cost" value on a month by month basis.
It should not be that difficult to determine that Telkom are paying X cents per megabit or whatever. Or if they pay a flat rate, then it's even easier. Measure the traffic and do the arithmetic.
stoke said:
ISP's to have access to the submarine cables [1] ... wow - [this is a dream] ... you'll have to first provide point 2 otherwise the infrastructure providers [e.g. telkom] will just overcharge for the link from the ISP's base to the undersea landing point.
Allow ISP's to install their own infrastructure [2] ... um - this is a waste. The infrastructure should belong to the people [e.g. municipality], and should be rented out to the highest bidder. Otherwise we'll have a lot of duplication which is a waste of limited national resources and space.
You contradict yourself here. Much of the reason why Internet access is expensive in South Africa, not to mention voice calls, is that Telkom can charge whatever the market will stand, so they do. And ICASA do virtually nothing about it. They don't regulate the price that Telkom charge for leased lines to ISPs, VANs and the cellular networks, as far as I know.
Let's say that a decision is made to allow players other than Telkom and the SNO to lay cables and put up microwave towers. Does it make a difference if there is one fibre-optic cable in a trench, or a dozen? In the 1990s, bandwidth was being installed all over Europe and North America at a prodigeous rate. In the end, it was unsustainable because the volume of traffic did not grow as fast as they had hoped. But now that applications that require vast amounts of bandwidth are being rolled out, all the fibre optic cables in the ground are useful.
Maybe, what we need is for government to spend some of the excess capital that is available in the fiscus on providing fibre cables to interconnect practically everywhere in the country. That's what was done in South Korea. It was one of the President's pet projects. Now about 60% of households in South Korea have broadband access and their economy is booming.
stoke said:
[3] - covered in 2 above.
With these in place, there is no reason for a SNO, and VSNL will be wrather pissed off, so - this is not going to happen
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The point of discussion here is about why and how ISPs should be allowed to get into the market as Tier 1 ISPs, and not just Telkom.
My overall point to the DoC person is that either Telkom should be re-nationalised or the remaining 38% stake in Telkom sold, and the telecommunication sector in South Africa completely opened to all players. If the latter happens, then empowering and funding ICASA to be a proper regulator is imperative.
The choice of Government, right from Jay Naidoo's time was to create a Duopoly. I'm sure that the intention was to attract investment from abroad. Back then, privatisation was being vociferously pushed by virtually everyone except Cosatu and the SACP. In hindsight, we can see that Cosatu and the Commies were right: privatisation of Telkom has been bad for the poor people of South Africa and all the employees that were dumped.
What I'm asking for here is suggestions on how further opening the telecomms market will benefit the people of South Africa, how it will increase competition, drop prices, and so forth.
If it is totally commercially unviable for some of the Tier 2 ISPs to become Tier 1 ISPs, then I'd like to have that explained. Is it too costly to lay fibre optic cables to interconnect the POPs and the gateways to the rest of the Internet via the SAT-3 and SAFE cables?
Will ISPs have to be allowed to compete directly with Telkom and the SNO for voice in order to be viable? I know there are numerous case studies that apply to this scenario. Let's hear from the MBAs out there!
The DoC isn't going to want to create the sort of situation where the customers lose money due to instability of the Telecomms licensees. What can we suggest to them about practical ways to increase competition between the incumbent, the SNO and the ISPs and VANs?
It isn't necessarily viable in South Africa to just let the private sector do everything to do with telecomms. Subsidies for the very poor might still be required. Profit making organisations will still want to make a profit. How much profit they are allowed to make is supposed to be controlled by a regulator.
I recall that the decision to license only one new fixed-line operator was because foreign investors were not keen to get involved if they were not given a benign environment to operate in. It's a half-baked idea because it does not encourage innovation. It encourages status-quo behaviour and stagnation. It is neither a publicly owned non-profit service nor is it fully competitive. There is no real incentive to compete, since it isn't in the interests of either network to drop prices.
Perhaps the way forward is to legislate that Telkom be broken up along functional lines, as has been suggested elsewhere. Competition should be allowed in every area. If the incumbent can't survive, then they lose control of that area. Still, the regulator has to be powerful and proactive to ensure that the playing field is indeed level.
It's all very well to soapbox. It's another thing to make proper recommendations. That's what lobbying and consumer activism are all about. We can complain and toyi-toyi, and we can offer solutions. I'm trying to do the latter. Please add your comments.
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