Telkom just never seems to grasp a basic concept:
Your customers are what keep your company profitable and to be successful you need to satisfy their needs and desires. Businesses and even many home users desire faster internet and the general population needs it to be more affordable.
For as long as they have existed, Telkom has been pricey and lethargic. The difference now is that consumers are starting to explore other options and investors are seeing what incredible opportunity there is.
Companies who get this right will be rolling in money. Telkom will either have to catch a serious wake up, or they will just become irrelevant over time as other providers make an effort to understand the market they're serving and offer services that are fast and affordable enough for that market.
Telkom relies on making a lot of money off a smaller amount of people rather than a lot of money off a lot of people. Bring the price down and gain more customers. Existing users will also be more likely to take you up on the higher end of your service offering. To illustrate my point, when people get upgraded from 1mbps to 2mbps, most people don't downgrade back to their original speed and take the savings, the majority of people will be happy to keep paying what they were and just keep the faster speed.
Last point: Telkom has become to used to not really having to compete over the years of their monopoly that now that they have to compete, they don't know how to because it's just not in their DNA. It's a skill that they've never had to develop and the DoC / Government are the last people on the planet to bring that expertise to the table. Telkom is struggling to excel in the fixed line market in which they had a massive lead and still largely own, to this day. Why are 8ta's prospects looking a bit better? Because 8ta was born into a competitive environment. From day one, they had to think about how to offer significant value and appeal to their target market.
Government shouldn't own companies; they're terrible at it. Look at SAA / Mango vs everyone else. The fact that Kulula can stay profitable with no bailouts in an arena where one of their biggest opponents are unbeatable, shows just how badly SAA is managed and how government-owned companies are just not used to being efficient, among other things.
