Vodacom Responds To Icasa Retraction

[rpm]

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=692

Vodacom's full response. There is also a link to the ICASA Media Release (PDF) at the end of the article.

 

[Insider]

I tend to support Vodacom's response.

The comparisons were not of oranges with apples e.g. per-minute rate for high-end users vs. high-end users. Rather, the dearest rate (prepaid CPS) in SA was compared with the cheapest rate (postpaid bundles) elsewhere. This will obviously show up as a huge difference.

As Maanda M from MTN also remarked on 702, you should compare this to buying bus tickets. If you only buy one at a time, you will pay a lot more (and get a lot less) than the guy who buys his monthly or yearly coupon.

Quote: "The Authority seems to justify the inaccuracies by stating that ‘the study is anecdotal and merely used to reflect trends’.

How will the people on this forum respond if their personal interests are attacked based on "anecdotal" studies and not on the facts?

 

[Clipse]

Personally this shows the uselessness of ICASA, wasting time on cellphone networks now while failing heavily with the telkom debacle.

 

[RolandD]

Politics! Remember the government also has a huge stake in vodacom, and I'm sure a lot of their BEE cronies have a stake in the other 2. Everybody is up in arms about Telscums R6b profit but AFAIK Vodacom also make a nett profit in that price range.

And so what if they spend R 20 billion on infrastructure, that infrastructure will still be worth R 20 billion tomorrow.

I use prepaid myself because I absolutly hate cellphone service providers and their pathetic service, getting ripped of at R3.30 a minute I can handle, but the maid has to work an entire day to earn enough to make a 20 minute call.

There is just no way that it could cost even 10% of that to make that call. The problem is people are willing to pay, even if they have to steal and murder to get the money for it.

Anyway, I'd like to see the majority of prepaid users (i.e. poor blacks) rock up at Vodaworld and unleash some anarchy on those schrooges.

Amen.

 

[morebroadband]

Fact 1: The South African cellular tariffs are competitive when compared with world averages. Broadly speaking, if you compare South Africa with developing markets, we are average in terms of our pricing and the same goes for the developed world. The fact of the matter is that many of the cellular tariffs today are lower than they were in 1994.

This is a smokescreen if there ever was one. Where are they taking into account the buying power of the consumer in SA compared to the rest of the world! To say that the rates compare favourably is just nonsense. How come I can make a call using Telkom (which is rated as one of the highest landline operators worldwide) to UK for R1.80, but it costs me R3.3 to call another cell user who happens to be 1 km away!

Do the maths - the obscene profits they make and then plough into sports sponsorships and functions for government makes me want to puke. I say more power to ICASA - if only that twit minister of comms, would stop medlling and let ICASA do their job!

It remains sad, no pathetic that the poor are being ripped off the worst and they are helpless. Just makes me want to puke, when I see someone spendng 35% of their daily wages just to communicate with their siblings!

 

[mbs]

I've lost all interest in whatever Knott-Craig might say, after his recent public utterings. Nothing more than a sycophant who will continue dancing to the tune of his masters, for as long as he remains CEO of Vodacom. Time for a change of top management there too, methinx...

 

[BTTB]

Scared to use my Cell Phone.

Without going into too much detail about what was said by ICASA, Vodacom etc, in my opinion the costs of making a Cell Phone Call is inhibitive to doing business or simply talking to a family member or friend.
And whatever Mr Knott says, he cannot detract from the fact that talking on a Cell Phone for any length of time is going to cost you an arm and a leg.
I always dread using a Cell Phone and subconsciously while speaking on the phone want to cut the conversation short.

 

[Darth Garth]

ICASA = bunch of fools.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

two years ago i had a buddy working at mtn as a student engineer. i won't go into the details of this. at the time he asked me to keep this strictly confidential as it would have landed him in hot water. however he no longer works there, so here goes.

to cut a long story short, he was issued with an mtn sim card which enabled him free calls within the mtn network and calls to other networks were in the region of 20c-25c per minute. the interesting thing to note is that this is probably cost price - this should give an idea of what their profit margins are - and more importantly why they are so hesitant in revealing their mark-up to carte blanche.

granted his position at the time (still a student), one can safely assume that this is the same for all top management, as well as many other employees. this is the reason that management within these mobile operators couldn't give a **** about prices to consumers, because it barely touches their own pockets. as long as they get well paid, and receive basically almost free telephony, they quite frankly couldn't give a damn about anyone else.

however i noted that in the carte blanche insert, it said that next year they will all be required by law to open up their books to icasa. things could get really interesting really soon.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

on a side note, i'm not asking for inter-network calls to be the same price as 20c-25c, nor am i asking for calls on the same network to be free. but even at 50c per minute for inter-network calls, and 25c per minute for same network calls is very well realistic. the problem is that everyone is brainwashed into thinking that calls are cheap by their marketing, yet nobody knows their true cost price.

to everyone who says that call prices are reasonable, why have prices been increasing year-on-year even though the subscriber base has surged passed 20 million users - almost half the country's population? how many more people do they want to subscribe before "the economies of scale" that they constantly mention have an effect in bringing prices to affordable levels?

 

[R4tt3xx]

This is going to impact negatively on the ICASA ADSL proposals, whenever that is released.

 

[Debbie]

I've lost all interest in whatever Knott-Craig might say, after his recent public utterings. Nothing more than a sycophant who will continue dancing to the tune of his masters, for as long as he remains CEO of Vodacom. Time for a change of top management there too, methinx...

I feel the same way about him. I recently was browsing through a back issue of iWeek, and came across a statement he had made, in which he called the Telecommuniations Act "One of the best pieces of legislation of it's kind in the world". Come again??? I've got a 100 page report which is pretty much dedicated to why this is not true. Think I'll email it to him