{"id":548487,"date":"2006-04-10T07:42:56","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T07:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/548487-high-internet-costs-making-headlines.html"},"modified":"2006-04-10T07:42:56","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T07:42:56","slug":"high-internet-costs-making-headlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/548487-high-internet-costs-making-headlines.html","title":{"rendered":"High Internet costs making headlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this insert, aired last night, Carte Blanche highlighted the fact that South Africa\u2019s Internet costs are in excess of 1000 % more expensive than many international countries. They further showed the negative impact of these costs on education and small businesses. <\/font><\/p>\n

A great deal of focus fell on the Department of Communication\u2019s shareholding in Telkom and other telecoms companies. <\/font><\/p>\n

Comments from Lyndal Shope-Mafole, Director-general of the DoC, drew particular attention. Her comments on Government\u2019s shareholding \u2018on behalf of the people\u2019 and their need for network shareholding in the case of a natural disaster like a tsunami were not well received.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Duncan McLeod, award winning ICT journalists at the Financial Mail, found Shope-Mafole\u2019s comments rather amusing. He was not alone in his synopsis. <\/font><\/p>\n

MyADSL forumites described her feedback as \u201ctalking lots of crap\u201d, \u201cslightly hilarious\u201d and "Where can I collect my check?".<\/font><\/p>\n

It is somewhat ironic that Government would describe their shareholding as \u2018for the people\u2019 while they themselves said that South Africans are paying far too much for telecoms services. <\/font><\/p>\n

Telkom\u2019s refusal to discuss this issue was also met with disdain. Carte Blanche questioned their dedication to customer service, regarding their failure to address the public on programs like Carte Blanche. <\/font><\/p>\n

The lack of open communication with the South African public is not new and has in the past tarnished Telkom\u2019s image significantly.<\/font> <\/p>\n

MyADSL forumites made their feelings known about Telkom\u2019s absence with comments like \u201cno comment from Telkom – why doesn\u2019t that surprise me\u201d and \u201cTelkom made themselves look particularly stupid by refusing to appear on the show\u201d.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Within the South African broadband community this lack of transparency from Telkom is not new or surprising but interestingly enough it does still serve to provoke tremendous irritation from consumers who are already unhappy with high prices.<\/font> <\/p>\n

In an interesting twist of events Telkom\u2019s website experienced some downtime shortly after the show. It is uncertain as to what caused the downtime, but users did ask tongue in cheek whether the blame could be placed at the door of the possible tsunami Shope-Mafole spoke about.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carte Blanche, the well known investigative journalism program screened on MNet, has tackled the issue of high Internet costs in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548487"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}