Court halts Telkom’s new ADSL billing system for DotCo
Judge Hlope ruled in favour of DotCo and granted a temporary order preventing Telkom from forcing DOTCO to abide by the billing system until the 5th of December when the court is expected to announce its final decision.
Johan Ferreira, MD of DotCo, claimed that the temporary order was a positive development but that his customers would have to wait until early December to see whether DotCo would be able to continue providing users an affordable means of accessing the Internet.
This issue has also been escalated to the level of the Regulator. A complaint has been lodged with ICASA on behalf of a number of ISPs that the proposed billing changes discriminate against all non-Telkom authenticated ISPs.
DotCo’s attorney, Brendan Hughes of Michalsons Attorneys, reiterated that the court order did not negate the urgent need for ICASA (Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) to rule on the proposed billing changes.
This new system will affect all ISP’s and influence broadband provisioning in South Africa placing this issue firmly in the sphere of the Regulator.
With the current system these non-authenticating ISP’s are able to offer high-cap accounts at extremely competitive rates but with the new billing system this will no longer be possible.
Telkom’s intended price increases for ADSL usage also include a hard cap on usage for customers of independent ISPs whereas TelkomInternet’s own customers are allowed to continue using the Internet on a restricted basis at no further charge once the theoretical usage caps have been reached.
“This is unfair”, says Ferreira, “and we are hoping that ICASA will recognise this unfairness and act in the best interests of all telecommunication users and their service providers”.
Hughes confirmed that ICASA is empowered by section 53 of the Telecommunications Act to declare a moratorium on any intended action by a telecommunications licence holder that is likely to operate unfairly against any category of persons.
Many broadband users have been up in arms about the proposed new system fearing that the freedom they have become accustomed to is a thing of the past.
It is not only the high cap that users will miss but also the ability to surf local sites once they have reached their cap.
Telkom’s new policy under this system to hard cap users means that subscribers will no longer be able to surf local sites once they have reached their limit. Previously, once a user reached his or her cap they were still able to access local sites.
This specific policy will hit the South African IT industry hard.
Website owners will no longer have an incentive to pay higher prices for local hosting, impacting heavily on the web hosting companies.
South African websites will also be hard hit making a policy of this nature ‘proudly not-South African’.
The 1st of November is just around the corner but there is still time for Telkom to win back the favour of the broadband community by re-evaluating this new billing system.
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