{"id":1740,"date":"2007-10-25T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-10-25T07:37:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-25T05:37:00","slug":"telkom-hindering-neotel-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/1740-telkom-hindering-neotel-progress.html","title":{"rendered":"Telkom \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchindering Neotel progress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"

SECOND network operator Neotel’s lack of effect on telecoms costs was partly because monopoly operator Telkom<\/a> was deliberately hindering its progress, the industry regulator heard yesterday. <\/p>\n

Neotel<\/a> is offering rival national backbone services to cellular operators, internet service providers and other voice and data carriers, but Telkom is literally closing the door on its potential contracts. <\/p>\n

Cell C would like to buy some of its underlying infrastructure from Neotel, it told the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa<\/a>). But the cellular operators had based their infrastructure in telephone exchanges owned by Telkom, and for Neotel to provide bandwidth to the cellular networks it needed Telkom’s permission. Telkom would not let Neotel access those exchanges, said Cell C’s manager of carrier relations, Gitesh Huri. <\/p>\n

Neotel’s effect would increase only if Icasa drew up new regulations giving it the right to access Telkom’s premises, Cell C said. <\/p>\n

Cell C’s network expansion was also being harmed by Telkom’s delaying tactics in providing the core infrastructure on which its network relied. Telkom’s infrastructure should be declared an essential facility so Icasa could control pricing and allow other operators equal access to its facilities, Icasa heard. <\/p>\n

Icasa is holding an inquiry on whether it should intervene in how much Telkom charges other operators to lease its national and international bandwidth. Huri believed consumers would enjoy a drop in the retail cost of voice and data services only if wholesale price caps were imposed to reflect the actual cost of providing the service, rather than a profit-pumped figure. <\/p>\n

Telkom claims it does not monopolise the market to a degree that would give Icasa the right to intervene. But the Competition Commission said there was incontrovertible evidence that SA’s low internet penetration, pricey data tariffs and punishing phone bills were a direct result of Telkom’s dominance. <\/p>\n

SA’s broadband penetration of 1% was among the world’s lowest. The volume of voice and data traffic carried by cellular networks had flourished largely because of Telkom’s inflated fees, said Ryan Hawthorne of the commission’s policy and research department. <\/p>\n

He also warned that Telkom’s legacy of dirty tricks would continue unless Icasa intervened. The commission had received numerous complaints about Telkom’s tactics of margin squeezing, unfair pricing structures and refusal to supply bandwidth to other operators. <\/p>\n

MTN<\/a> and Vodacom<\/a> are beginning to construct their own national backbones, and Telkom claims that will end its dominance, as the cellular operators will be able to sell spare capacity on their networks to other companies. But the lock-out tactics that Telkom used to hamper Neotel may also face MTN and Vodacom if they tried to sell bandwidth to other players, Icasa heard.<\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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SECOND network operator Neotel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of effect on telecoms costs was partly because monopoly operator Telkom was deliberately hindering its progress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}