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Handset regulations postponed
- Thread starter rpm
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- handset icasa regulations vodacom
FireTelkom
Well-Known Member
Bad Bad Bad
Vodacom just showed the world that they are even more evil than Telkom. They are afraid of competition and transparency and will continue to screw us public even longer.
I will now not renew my Vodacom contracts and choose either MTN or CellC
Thanks for nothing Vodacom
FireTelkom
Vodacom just showed the world that they are even more evil than Telkom. They are afraid of competition and transparency and will continue to screw us public even longer.
I will now not renew my Vodacom contracts and choose either MTN or CellC
Thanks for nothing Vodacom
FireTelkom
While it is not good to see that ICASA has to back down from regulation – like we have unfortunately seen before – I think ICASA is to blame if they did indeed put regulations in which was not addressed in public hearings. This is partly the reason why the ADSL regulations were a mess…
oronte
Expert Member
Ou grote
Honorary Master
ICASA staff should have their pay postponed until they actually do something useful
I have just canceled in the 10mths 2 contracts with vodacom. With both contracts they took between 4-6 months to acknowledge the fact that they had received the cancellation fax which I sent them. Each month I had to re-fax the information and contact my bank to have the charges reversed.
They are a real bunch of as@@holes. Their cancellation dept don't talk to their accounts dept - u phone one they say you must talk to the other. So now I have just stopped phoning them and will keep reversing the charges until the contact me.
..........the billing for free
"Contracts must be transparent and easy to understand, including the billing for free and charged airtime."
Here is one big problem for the SP's and the networks. "Free billing"? Transparency? what ever next.
Most SP's throw more money into a deal upfront, than the initial Network incentive provides for, to put the best deal out for the month.The Networks still hold service providers to a sliding scale target, on activation of Sim cards per month. In the early days this is understandable because a Network is trying to reach critical mass however over time surely the profitability of a subscriber should become just as important. Not so. A service provider cannot structure their deals and offers around profitability as they are too busy chasing targets. If they fail to reach individual targets they get hammered by a declining % commission across the board on all airtime consumed by their particular base for that month, so the negative implication of not hitting targets are massive. They therefore throw everything and the kitchen sink at the deals and in some cases the SP's real and only profit on a subscriber, is made up of the compulsory VAS services they force down your throat, ie Billing, CLi, and *Sim card Insurance (ye beat that one......Sim card insurance, in the event that your sim malfunctions) I abuse mine worse than a choir boy in the Vatican (allegedly) and it has never failed on me in 7 years
(fact)
So why is it not surprising to me that the network would want to take legal action and stretch out the game a bit more on these and other issues?? This issue of subscriber profitability is the very reason that the customer service is so shocking, if every subscriber on the network phoned into one of the call centres and wasted 10 minutes of the operators time, there would be no profit left to worry about, because the margins have become so thin down the food chain. The networks margins are however more carefully calculated and this remains pretty constant and controllable. If the service providers dont give them what they demand, then they dont loose anything, they simply claw back their losses by penalizing the food chain a few % on the airtime, which is where the real fat is. SP's are in an "over traded and saturating market" and are forced to come up with weird and wonderful schemes like compulsory VAS services to make ends meet. But don't feel to sorry for them, they are now masters at it and R2 here and R15 there of guaranteed income, over a million clients (for instance) for 24 months............adds up to a tidy packet.
This is the very reason why service providers are now into selling anything from Home/car Insurance, ADSL, funeral polices..............soon enough they will be throwing in the Pine coffins with the funeral policy but will make you sign an indemnity against the splinters. My 5c and I guess (*sadly)that's all its actually worth.
"Contracts must be transparent and easy to understand, including the billing for free and charged airtime."
Here is one big problem for the SP's and the networks. "Free billing"? Transparency? what ever next.
Most SP's throw more money into a deal upfront, than the initial Network incentive provides for, to put the best deal out for the month.The Networks still hold service providers to a sliding scale target, on activation of Sim cards per month. In the early days this is understandable because a Network is trying to reach critical mass however over time surely the profitability of a subscriber should become just as important. Not so. A service provider cannot structure their deals and offers around profitability as they are too busy chasing targets. If they fail to reach individual targets they get hammered by a declining % commission across the board on all airtime consumed by their particular base for that month, so the negative implication of not hitting targets are massive. They therefore throw everything and the kitchen sink at the deals and in some cases the SP's real and only profit on a subscriber, is made up of the compulsory VAS services they force down your throat, ie Billing, CLi, and *Sim card Insurance (ye beat that one......Sim card insurance, in the event that your sim malfunctions) I abuse mine worse than a choir boy in the Vatican (allegedly) and it has never failed on me in 7 years
(fact) So why is it not surprising to me that the network would want to take legal action and stretch out the game a bit more on these and other issues?? This issue of subscriber profitability is the very reason that the customer service is so shocking, if every subscriber on the network phoned into one of the call centres and wasted 10 minutes of the operators time, there would be no profit left to worry about, because the margins have become so thin down the food chain. The networks margins are however more carefully calculated and this remains pretty constant and controllable. If the service providers dont give them what they demand, then they dont loose anything, they simply claw back their losses by penalizing the food chain a few % on the airtime, which is where the real fat is. SP's are in an "over traded and saturating market" and are forced to come up with weird and wonderful schemes like compulsory VAS services to make ends meet. But don't feel to sorry for them, they are now masters at it and R2 here and R15 there of guaranteed income, over a million clients (for instance) for 24 months............adds up to a tidy packet.
This is the very reason why service providers are now into selling anything from Home/car Insurance, ADSL, funeral polices..............soon enough they will be throwing in the Pine coffins with the funeral policy but will make you sign an indemnity against the splinters. My 5c and I guess (*sadly)that's all its actually worth.
LCBXX
Honorary Master
Dammit. I was so looking forward to leave MTN without paying that absurd "cancellation fee".
I am so tired of crappy comments like this. No, not just in Africa. Telecoms companies around the world skirt around regulators, try to protect their models of income (I mean why does an sms still cost so much, hell, why do they even still exist in the same old format?).
Yeah, ICASA may well be useless at what they do, but regulators around the world struggle to get Cable operators, cellular operators and telecoms companies to fall in line.
fritzdeelman
Well-Known Member
Fully agree - The question begs, what's the use of democracy when the real rulers of this world are untouchable in their glass palaces doing their utmost to best to exclude others from direct participation in the economies of the world.
zamicro
Expert Member
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exactly my point. Now we all have to wait until Feb 2009.
They doing exactly the something as what they did with MNP.
Extend extend...... until anybody actually cares about it no more.
We all stuck with 24 month contracts again....
I remember something about this a few years ago that never matured until now anyway.
They doing exactly the something as what they did with MNP.
Extend extend...... until anybody actually cares about it no more.
We all stuck with 24 month contracts again....
I remember something about this a few years ago that never matured until now anyway.
*Sim card Insurance (ye beat that one......Sim card insurance, in the event that your sim malfunctions) I abuse mine worse than a choir boy in the Vatican (allegedly) and it has never failed on me in 7 years
I'm sorry if that is the reason why you have sim card insurance, for the majority of people out there its to protect them from the very likely theft of their cellphones.
As far all those who commented previously and said how we should stop critizising ICASA as they actually did something good for once, I expect you all to reply and to withdraw those comments admitting that you were wrong. Just as I will reply and withdraw my comments once a single deadline has been reached that I have made negative remarks towards.
Awesome news week for me. First the phone that I want gets postponed indefinitely, then secondly as I was about to cancel my contract to move to another SP I get nailed by ICASA the cowardly regulator.