Telkom mobile is a no-brainer

Yes

"No one at Telkom will really admit that the purchase of Multi-Links in Nigeria was a mistake"
No one at telkom EVER admits ANYTHING was a mistake!

"Telkom has to enter the mobile space, or risk a decade or so of literally winding down its legacy business."
Telkom can hardly compitantly handle its ADSL , they have already lost 453 000 subscribers !

"The building blocks are there. It has a core network... a massive network of fibre crisscrossing the country (a network that Vodacom and MTN could only dream of). This core network already carries tremendous amounts of data and voice traffic."
True but what if that same network is the one they they cant maintain becuase of cable theft? Impressive network but not well maintained.

"It's not quite as simple as plug and play, but the core exists "
It exists but how well maintained ?

"Where Telkom says it will compete is in providing "differentiated services". At the start, it will focus on "simplicity, quality and value".
In other words more "valued added services" that most of us dont need or want but that we have to pay for anyway!

"The market has evolved significantly over the past decade and Telkom is in a position to offer hybrid (2G and 3G) voice and data services. Their mobile strategy isn't reliant on a legacy mobile voice business."
The adsl market has evolved over th past decade , yet the same people that telkom are trying to get back are the same people that telkom could not care less about! I have adsl because it is the cheapest solution for me , i dont want or need the telkom landline but i am forced to have it .

"Here's another indication of how Telkom wants to shake up the market: it's planning to offer 12 month rollover for unutilised minutes"
This will no doubt lure a few people to it , but it will still be a 24 month contract with the devil!

Forgive me if i dont see this as something positive but going on past track records and how badly they maintain and market adsl , and how reluctant they are to make any changes that dont show a short term gain to their share holders , but a long term loss , as we have seen with ADSL . I am using adsl as the exmaple because that directly influences my life daily. Why would/should i move to telkom mobile , when i have no confidence in them? As a 384k user myself and many were holding thumbs for a free bump to 512k , but so far nothing. In fact telkom keeps bumping up its speeds, yet us plebs at the bottom are given the shaft all the time.

Why they dont just do the basics right and focus on getting just one aspect of their buisness working first ? We are on this forum for a reason , because we are unhappy with them and their views and values. Give us something positive for all of us to be happy about. Show motivation and dedication to fixing problems we indetify all the time for them. This is not a company with a positive track record
and they wont give up anything without a fight LLU for example , but now it is flashing its cheque book at MTN , and they have gone for it , i say good for MTN , make them pay but make sure you are still in control of everything give them nothing for free , because telkom give me/you/public/consumer nothing for free .

/end rant
 
@Kabal:
1. Everyone but a handful of Telkom's top management knows that Nigeria was a mistake.
2. 453000 ? POTS or ADSL?
3. Core network is fibre. Cable theft issues are on the access network where copper is deployed.
4. The core is very well maintained as it was not outsourced like the access network.
5. How does "simplicity, quality and value" equal more "valued added services" ?
6. True that they will try and win back users in the lower income segments who migrated to cheaper prepaid cellular services.
7. All companies offer better deals for term contract subscribers as it guarantees annuity income.
8. AFAIK the team running Telkom Mobile were headhunted from VC, MTN and CellC. Very few of the old Telkom players are in there and they are being run as a separate division.

I share your pain regarding ADSL (broadband and bandwidth) and also cannot wait for LLU to be implemented here.

I have plenty of respect for RPM and his team at MyBB as they represent us at all the relevant forums and air our concerns pretty forcefully at times!
 
Another typical Telkom only wakes up when it's too late..

One interesting thing about this is if they are going mobile they will also compete more directly with Neotel who never seemed to be *really* going to be a "fixed line operator" anyways. And that will cause some problems for the Neotel chaps..
 
@moggie
1. They are prone to making mistake a note.
2. An article on these very forums a few days ago showed the amount of clients telkom had lost since 2005 added together it was 435 000 or 453 000 something ridiculous like that , reminds me of rats fleeing a sinking ship....
3. Core network is fibre , granted and copper is the one that gets stolen but i am still not convinced , that it is all telkom-proof.
4. Fine it was not outsourced, but as any telkom techie if there are enough qualified people around in telkom , very few most have left or have their own buisnesses now most that are there are lazy and ignorant.
5. Has telkom ever made something simple? You want adsl you need to get a landline and pay for the phone ect ect. They are sharks.
6. Once those people have left to go to lets say MTN . Now Telkom must buy from MTN and sell to the people at below MTN's price .. Huh ? Or will they look to hook up with MTN as partnership similar to the one they once had with Vodacom? It wont be long before telkom start to call the shots in that relationship , no doubt it will use the time to build up its network before kicking MTN to the curb.
7. Agreed , but it is also the best way to shaft the people who have to pay huge settlement amount should they want to cancel the contract before the end of it .
8. That is possibly a good thing , yet they still report ot Telkom and must submit to their demands .

I too have great respect for RPM and the group , if only they could somehow be consultants to telkom and advise them on pitfalls in all their plans and schemes and how best to get a better public image and better market share . I dont mean to agrue with you but i cant see this as anything other than telkom trying to get clients back, without listening to all the problems that they already have and have not yet started to sort out yet. Give us something to be positive about, anything really , the only thing that telkom seems to do sucessfully is push clients away , the growth in all the other players is proof of that. Telkom need to wake up and smell what they are shoveling. It always seems to me as though they start a project in hope that it will fix all the other problems they have and that people will forget about all the other problems. After many years of myBB we are still here and still complaining about almost the same stuff we did right from the start .

I respect your views and your simple and calm response to my post , but i unlike you do not expect this to work and to make everyone suddenly rush back to telkom .
 
Kabal said:
I too have great respect for RPM and the group , if only they could somehow be consultants to telkom and advise them on pitfalls in all their plans and schemes and how best to get a better public image and better market share . I dont mean to agrue with you but i cant see this as anything other than telkom trying to get clients back, without listening to all the problems that they already have and have not yet started to sort out yet. Give us something to be positive about, anything really , the only thing that telkom seems to do sucessfully is push clients away , the growth in all the other players is proof of that. Telkom need to wake up and smell what they are shoveling. It always seems to me as though they start a project in hope that it will fix all the other problems they have and that people will forget about all the other problems. After many years of myBB we are still here and still complaining about almost the same stuff we did right from the start .

I respect your views and your simple and calm response to my post , but i unlike you do not expect this to work and to make everyone suddenly rush back to telkom .
Click to expand...

I agree with you...

I'm always calm!

PS. Look out for a RPM article about Telkom - to be released soon!
 
More than anyone else, journalists seem to live a few years in the past. I haven't checked, but I would bet that these same journalist predicted a rosy future for Telkom Media, since it was clearly the wave of the future, and where Telkom needed to go. By the time they were making that prediction, the world had moved on; there may once have been an IPTV opportunity in South Africa, but, apart from the obvious fact that the Internet is rapidly making IPTV a waste of time, that opportunity was certainly severely curtailed by the existence of DSTV.

Now, after the mobile market is saturated and slowing rapidly all over the world, mobile termination rates are under extreme pressure, and there probably isn't a spare couple of percent of market share left in South Africa, they predict that this is Telkom's only hope for the future.

At the same time, they glibly predict the collapse of the "fixed line" market. Broadband market penetration in South Africa remains way below where it should be, and Telkom remains by far in the strongest position to grow and dominate this market. This is almost certainly where the real growth opportunity is.

What is this journalist thinking, or has he simply caught the mobile bug that mobile operators have been infecting the market with for the past few years? The symptoms are clear - you believe that anyone who rolls out a mobile network will make billions, and pay back their shareholders in a couple of years, and that there is no end to the growth curve. Cell C, anyone?

The good news, of course, is that Telkom is taking its eye off the ball. Instead of playing to their strength, they are (yet again) going to try to be a small (agile?) player in a large market dominated by others (see Telkom Media, Multilinks, Africa Online etc). That opens the door for others to take the lead in the broadband market, and perhaps even fulfill the prophecy that Telkom's "fixed line" market will die. (Check the stats, BTW, most of the "fixed lines" lost by Telkom in the past year have NOT migrated to mobile, they've been ported to other fixed line operators.)
 
@ads: Make no mistake, Telkom is very aware of the need to grow and defend its ADSL and POTS customers through their advantaged position in the access network!

What will not surprise me, is that they dump Multilinks (as soon as this CEO is gone) and bring Jeffrey Hedberg in to run Telkom Mobile.

They have made some new appointments in the retail division (Brian Armstrong, etc) and these guys are starting to make their presence felt.

What I also think creates the incorrect impression, is that there are too many unrelated articles referring to Telkom and highlighting certain issues in isolation. E.g. in this article the author should have approached Telkom for direct comment about the concerns you correctly list, viz. that they appear to be neglecting ADSL.
 
5 Firsts for Mobile in SA by Telkom Mobile

5 Firsts for Mobile Market in SA by Telkom Mobile

Telkom Mobile will be launching 5 New Firsts for Mobile Cellular in SA and I personally welcome that !

The rest of you can Live & Die with MTN & VodaCom !

Competition is Great for ALL - Everyone Benefits - Just like a STRIKE action at a company - Not everyone wants to STRIKE but everyone wants the 15% increase.:)


DXL - Team

Can't Reveal too much ( I have been warned )
 
I must say that it is not often that I read an article that I completely disagree with. This is however one of them. The only way this article makes sense is a future when voice rules the roost or when the article was written ten years ago.

1) Mobile networks have been cash cows. But it was a new industry. Margins will come under pressure, voice margins will probably fail drastically in the next decade.
2) Landlines are not a "legacy business" - well I hope not for the bazillions that is being spent across the globe to switch to fiber. You cannot look at global "newspaper headline" trends and say that landlines are not a possible growth sector in this country. If Telkom gets their act together it can become a growth industry - they are just actively suppressing it. Have a look at http://chartsbin.com/view/5yy . China 23.3 landlines per 100 people. Brazil landlines 21.4 landlines per 100 people. US 49.6 landlines per 100 people. Germany 62.5 landlines per 100 people. South Africa ...... 8.9 landlines per 100 people. If Telkom cannot grow the land line penetration in South Africa, on the back of data and other services it is because they are incompetent and not because "people are stopping to use landlines.". People NEVER used landlines in South Africa, we have a massive potential for GROWTH.
3)
Marketing? Check. Prepaid airtime channel? Check
Click to expand...
... err Telkom's marketing and distribution channels nowhere near match the other operators. They are not where the customers are. The current channels will cater to people who already have landlines, and not those people who don't have landlines. Their marketing and distribution channels are FAILING in promoting the current business - why would it suddenly start to work on mobile?
4)
September says Telkom is targeting a minimum of 10% of the mobile market in the next three to five years. Obviously a statement like that is being driven by the business case.
Click to expand...
Of course. [sarcasm]Cell C and Virgin Mobile just made immediate dents in the market.[/sarcasm] What do Telkom really have that they don't? The only thing they have is more cash ... meaning they can bleed a lot longer...
5) This is competition - the mobile strategy depends on Telkom running a more efficient business than their competitors. There is no other way. They CAN'T use their current position too much ... the competition commission will cut them down. Even ICASA is slowly but surely growing more fangs. And Telkom has not been running a very efficient business.
6) At the end of the day it is all business ... not technology. Telkom won't suddenly become a magic entity because they have a mobile network. If they can't run their current business, they won't be able to run any other business.
 
I reckon Voda are in for a bigger shocker.. than the inter connect thing. Just watch.. And think about this.. Telkom can eveb do auto routing for you .. Like when ur cell is in your office or home route calls to those handsets. If users want. .. The are a LOT of services Telkom can through at consumers that Voda MTN etc won't be abe to compete with and remain same priced:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X