The reason Telkom can do this is simple. They are certainly feeling the competitive pressure (mostly in business) from Neotel, according to reports. Hence they have to keep revenues up, and what better way to do it than pass the costs on to a large number of customers who will simply pay and not complain? Most consumers a) don't notice, except perhaps that the bill is higher b) don't do anything about it. It's only a small fraction of consumers that notice and make a noise (like the people on this forum). The only way to make Telkom take any notice would be to get a large number of consumers to churn - i.e. tell everyone you know (both businesses and indivuduals) to look for alternatives - they're perhaps not everywhere yet, but they do exist. Remember that complaining is just words - people actually need to vote with their wallets, or nothing will actually change.