Telkom gives me heartburn
It’s not exactly hot news that Telkom is the bane of many lives. Its record of providing telecommunications services to South African is highly unimpressive, and the prices it charges are hair-raisingly high.
As table one shows, South Africa has a relatively low penetration of landlines, compared to such economic marvels as Brazil, Malaysia, Russia and China. Telkom just plain isn’t good at getting telephone lines laid and operating, which is problematic because they are the only ones in the country who are allowed to do it.
| Population | Number of landlines | Penetration | |
| Morocco | 33,757,175 | 1,266,000 | 3.8% |
| India | 1,129,866,154 | 49,750,000 | 4.4% |
| South Africa | 43,997,828 | 4,729,000 | 10.7% |
| Malaysia | 24,821,286 | 4,342,000 | 17.5% |
| Brazil | 190,010,647 | 38,800,000 | 20.4% |
| Chile | 16,284,741 | 3,326,000 | 20.4% |
| China | 1,321,851,888 | 368,000,000 | 27.8% |
| Russia | 141,377,752 | 40,100,000 | 28.4% |
| Hungary | 9,956,108 | 3,350,000 | 33.6% |
Source: CIA World Fact Book
Not only is Telkom unusually bad at rolling out phone lines, it adds insult to injury by overcharging for its “services”. Table two shows the results of a study by Genesis Analytics, commissioned by the South Africa Foundation, titled Telecommunications prices in South Africa: An international peer group comparison.
The study compared Telkom’s prices with prices in a mix of developing and developed countries, including Brazil, India, Morocco, Thailand, Canada, Hong Kong, Norway, Sweden and the United States. As the table shows, South Africa is basically the most expensive provider in the group.
High telecoms prices hurt the economy in hundreds of ways, big and small. But what really raises my ire is the dismal level of service we South Africans receive in exchange for those exorbitant prices.
How Telkom prices stack up compared to other countries
| Rank (1 is most expensive) | Out of: (number of countries surveyed) | Number of times more expensive than the cheapest price | % greater than the average price | |
| Business ADSL | 1 | 15 | 9.3 | 147.7% |
| Domestic leased lines | 1 | 12 | 14.7 | 101.5% |
| International leased lines | 1 | 11 | 31.4 | 398.6% |
| Retail ADSL | 1 | 15 | 8 | 139.2% |
| ISP fees | 4 | 13 | 5.1 | 45.3% |
| Business – local calls | 1 | 15 | 10.7 | 198.5% |
| Business – international calls | 5 | 15 | 3.3 | -13.6% |
| Business – mobile calls | 2 | 15 | 22.7 | 106.8% |
| Retail – local calls | 4 | 14 | 7.9 | 79.3% |
| Retail – mobile calls | 5 | 15 | 10.7 | 37.2% |
Source: Study commissioned by the South Africa Foundation
Like many South Africans, I have my share of Telkom war stories. My most recent Telkom horror took place at the Telkom branch office in the Rosebank Mall. That particular Telkom Direct shop is the only one serving the Rosebank/Killarney area, and so is always busy, especially at lunch time, when office workers arrive to pay their bills and haggle over faulty lines.
On this particular Monday, the manager of the branch, Jeanette, was away from the store for training (not a moment to soon, in my books). I only know her first name because my six subsequent telephone calls to the branch were, unsurprisingly but ironically, not answered.
The store was busy; it was lunchtime and I was joined by many other time-crunched white collar workers. The shop is divided into a bill paying counter, and a queries counter. Two men manned the enquiry desk, while a lone woman womanned the payments area.
All three were in the usual mould of Telkom employees: torpid, indolent, rude, and completely indifferent to the mounting fury of customers kept waiting. In the clearly visible back room, a small gathering was taking place, with four or five other store employees enjoying a chat and a cup of tea, while those of us in the queue plotted their gory demise.
I stood in that queue for over an hour. That would be bad enough, but there were only five people in the queue, and I was second in line. The impressive ineptitude and slowness of the two men behind the counter managed to make the simplest transaction into a twenty minute affair involving reams of paperwork and furrowed brows.
Most frustrating of all, I was there because the Nobel Science Prize candidate who processed my application for a home phone at Telkom HQ christened me Ms. Ducken. Now, Ducken is a fine, Germanic-sounding name, but it is not my name. My fury at the endless wait at the shop was compounded by the thought that it was the ineptitude of another Telkom employee that forced me to be there in the first place.
It’s so glaringly obvious what the problem is: Telkom has no competition, and it doesn’t fire workers for being bad at their jobs. There is no sense of urgency, no respect for the people paying the bills because, let’s face it, where else are we going to go? It’s a scandal and a disgrace that Telkom is still an entrenched monopoly, abusing customers and pulling up a handbrake on the South African economy after fourteen years of democracy.
Clearly, the company has friends in very high places, who have managed to obfuscate and delay the licensing and creation of a second national operator. The politicians who protect Telkom from competition are responsible for the lost growth potential in the country, the misery and frustration Telkom clients experience, and the humiliatingly bad quality of telecommunications infrastructure.
Those hopefuls in government who plan to make South Africa into an “information economy” are fools if they believe that can happen without getting Telkom out of its cosy, rent-seeking racket.
Moneyweb
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