Naked ADSL and LLU
Naked ADSL – a DSL service which is not bundled with a compulsory analogue voice service – has been on South African ISPs’ wish list for years.
MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen recently highlighted the need for Telkom to offer an ADSL service where the telephone and ADSL line rental is split and not conditional on the other.
Jansen also urged ICASA and the DoC to “go for the easy wins that will give immediate benefit to all” instead of merely aiming for an unrealistic full Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) date of November 2011.
Jansen asked for, among other things, naked ADSL, more affordable IPC pricing and better last mile ADSL access speeds.
New Telkom CEO Pinky Moholi told MyBroadband that Telkom has been working on LLU type offerings, which include bitstream access services like Chipac and IPStream, to ensure they are ready for LLU when it arrives.
Moholi however pointed out that while Telkom is working closely with ICASA and the DoC on LLU, it does not want to prescribe to the regulator what should be done.
Moholi explained that services like Naked ADSL and IPStream are essentially LLU type offerings, and that Telkom will wait for ICASA to give guidance as to how and when LLU should happen.
Communications Minister Roy Padayachie continues to punt November 2011 as the date that the LLU process will be completed, but the minister has recently indicated that a ‘unique’ LLU model is likely in South Africa – and that stakeholders will have to ‘wait and see’ until this model is announced.
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