Papi’s ADSL promises
Its goal, he says, is to bring this down to 14 days. Speaking after the release of its interim results earlier this week, Molotsane – who described increasing broadband penetration as his "passion" – said while he was pleased that there had been some improvement, he was by no means satisfied with the installation lead times yet.
Chief operating officer Reuben September said he preferred to refer to any ADSL installation backlogs rather as "a healthy order book", and said new demand was being satisfied "increasingly faster".
A pilot project undertaken earlier this year had shown Telkom what was possible in terms of improving its processes, Molotsane said.
The group had the right tools, methods and systems in place, and was using contract and temporary workers to help it to deliver in the short-term.
Cape Town is next target
The next geographical destination that it was targeting was Cape Town, Molotsane said. But rolling ADSL out around the country would take time.
ADSL subscribers rose by 99.6% in the six months to end September, to 190 172, and Molotsane said Telkom was experiencing significant demand for ADSL.
After offering a 4Mbps service to customers at the same price as the DSL 1024 product, the number of sales per week had nearly doubled; increasing to 660 per week from 330 per week when launched, Telkom said.
Telkom puts its share of the broadband market at 67%, followed by Vodacom 3G with 14%, MTN with 9%, iBurst with 7% and Sentech with just 3%.
Many countries offering ADSL give customers the option to self install their ADSL lines.
Where possible, this should help Telkom cut down its rollout load. But it has yet to be introduced.
Not happening overnight
Molotsane said this was because it had encountered some problems that were unique to the South African environment and as a result, the software had to be customised.
However, one would be able to choose the self-installation option "soon", Molotsane said.
In order to improve the quality of broadband available and make services like triple play – voice, video and data over the same pipe – a reality, Telkom needs to shorten the local loop from the network backbone to homes and offices.
Molotsane said it was accelerating the rollout of fibre optic cabling to shorten the loop from 5.5km to around 2km.
About eight out of every ten orders first required work of this nature, he said.
Apart from working towards improving ADSL installation times, Telkom also sought to improve overall service levels, and had put a two-year long action plan in place to do this after thoroughly researching the challenges that it faces.
Molotsane said it had identified some quick wins and so customers should see some improvements soon. But this could not all happen over night.
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