Telkom sucks worse than what you thought

[Chevron]

100 Mbps Triple Play Service for R 436-00

Consumers often complain about South Africa?s exorbitant ADSL prices, and it is sometimes good to understand why people in the know slate Telkom?s rates.

In South Africa consumers generally pay a few hundred Rands per month for a basic ADSL connection with a usage limit of around 3 GB. When compared with international offerings on a fair basis ? which involves a Cost/Mbps/GB comparison ? it emerges that local ADSL subscribers are paying as much as 7 000% more than their international counterparts.

This is however all very technical and a basic example may serve to illustrate how far South Africa is lagging behind developed countries.

Orange SA ? which operates in Paris - recently launched their 100 Mbps triple play service, offering an uncapped 100 Mbps broadband connection, 51 channel television service and unlimited phone calls. The price - R 436-00 a month.

This is however not the best deal in town ? Paris that is. Free, a competing French ISP, announced a ?30 ? or R 290-00 - a month triple play offering which includes a 50 Mbps Internet connection, free phone calls to 42 countries and high-definition television.

This offer is essentially a combination of an uncapped ADSL connection, your full-bouquet DSTV service, the best Telkom Closer call plan, and unlimited international phone calls for a flat rate of under R 300-00 per month.

When looking at these offerings it becomes blatantly clear why knowledgeable local consumers cry foul at Telkom?s fixed line broadband rates and why a massive digital divide has developed between the developed world and developing countries like South Africa.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/ADSL/933.html

[ioiiooio]

Gawd, when will it ever end. Makes me sick....period. Another thing which I'm worred about is that even if new competition was put in place it has been a notable trend in SA IMO for so-called competitors to jump in on the gravy train and usualy end up being only slightly cheaper. Is there no organisation in SA to protect us consumers from this kind of tyranny?

[Icenflame]

there are meant to be regulators but they don't really have the legislative power needed to make noticeable changes.

It's all about the bottom line guys everything in the S.A. is over priced well most things are...

S.A. Banking services they over charge for all of their services offered why because it is more profitable for companies to negotiate pricing tariffs in this country than to have a pricing war.

This way they come out tops all the time.

The Mobile industry - is another prime example.

The Motor Vehcile industry is another sector.

The thing is that Big buisness in S.A. has learnt that working together is more profitable than working against. Just read the finacial times once in a while and see how much earnings these industires post.

My question is do we the consumers (the ones that are meant to count) feel the share of the profits in forms of price cuts etc?

It's all about big money and we the 'little' people have no other recourse in this country there is no form of Social responsibility from corpeations towards the individual consumer.

[Frozenfireside]

YES! Telkom suxxorz!
And if anyone posts saying 'Why are you guys complaining? it won't do any good!'
Well i'm sure there were a few critics who said 'what good would burning a bra do?' and look where we are now...So stfu.

[Icenflame]

^ ^ ^ I'm with you on that one. I recently had a run in with my finical service provider as we all do from time to time.

I got no joy and I was thinking that if every customer signed a pricing cut partition and wrote into the institution on a daily basis or just once to ask for the pricing cut or better service delivery things would happen.

The only way things start to change is if we force change much like the political movement in this country. We the people need to stand up against these companies and really unite if we could get that right i foresee many changes.

[Bke]

Yes well shall stand together brothers and sisters we will fight we will never give up not even death or debit will stop us, okay maby debit will stop us,but who cares? Join me in battle! Grab your sword and fight the hord! Im just not sure how to fight this hord thou!... Charge! ~dramatic debit music~

[Chevron]

Today is a good day to die.

[wir]

Today is a good day to die.

For the Confederacy!!

[Chevron]

For the Confederacy!!

Don't you mean "for the Klingon Empire"?

[wir]

No, I mean the Confederacy of Crab People.
Sing the Crab-People song!
Crab People!
Crab People!
Taste Like Crabs,
Talk Like People!
Crab People!
Crab People!

This is weird now, erm.

"local ADSL subscribers are paying as much as 7 000% more"
This is why I'm moving to England or Amsterdam ASAP.

[Puffinoid]

Telkom must really fancy themselves lately, what with the whole "Do broadband" and that "reduction" in price thereof. 7000%...geez!! So upsetting :(

Where the hell is this SNO, or Neotel or whatever the heck it's called? Will competition even help the way ADSL pricing seems to be a "norm" here of late. Only people in the know of computers, technology and so forth only realise the amount of getting screwed by - and it's sore....

[Gammaray]

Telkom has dropped its prices twice since the conception of Neotel. Yes, they are still screwing us hard, but atleast they are using some lubrication and the bleeding has stopped somewhat. Neotel is busy with trials afaik, but they can only do so much seeing that they are kinda dependant on the infrastructure of Infraco, which is also goverment owned. Either way, don't expect big changes anytime soon.

[Chevron]

No launch date for Neotel commercial services

Neotel says that the launch of their commercial offerings is on track, but that they can not give a definite date.

Speaking to MyBroadband, a Neotel spokesman said that everything is on track at an operational level, and that the company is currently in the process of clearing up ‘engineering issues’.

According to Neotel there are always issues when ‘moving into new spectrum’, and it is currently addressing all related concerns like interference. The company further said that its official launch date will depend on the timelines needed to get all physical sites – which will serve customers through CDMA technology – sorted out.

Angus Hay, Neotel’s Head of Strategy, said that their CDMA trial is continuing, but that the company can not give specific feedback about the trial results yet. The company will launch ‘fast Internet’ services using CDMA2000, and follow on with ‘true broadband’ offerings using WiMax in future.

Launch date still uncertain

When pushed for an official launch date the company said there are many factors influencing the launch of their services, and while they are on track at an operational level a specific date is not a possibility at this stage.

The second national operator previously indicated that they moved their initial launch date of late 2006 to September 2007, but while the company said that it is still possible they did not want to commit to a September launch.

Hay did however confirm that their billing systems, marketing plans and related projects are on track, but that any more detail may give too much away to their competitors.

Neotel MD Ajay Pandey recently said that people should also see the full licensing and spectrum issue in context. While the company was licensed in December 2005, it only received its 800 MHz CDMA spectrum a few months ago.

“We got that frequency only three months ago, and that whole process took more than a year in terms of hearings and in terms of giving in our submissions. And it's been three months since we got the spectrum, and in another eight weeks or ten weeks you will see CDMA getting deployed in Pretoria and Jo'burg to start with, as a part of our pilot,” Pandey told Moneyweb in June this year.

In early June, Pandey did however promise that ordinary South Africans should see services from Neotel within “the next few weeks”, and considering that this was nearly three months ago many consumers are starting to lose trust in Neotel as they continue to fail to provide concrete launch dates.

InfraCo not holding Neotel back

The ongoing political and legislative wrangling regarding InfraCo – the state owned broadband network provider – directly influences Neotel as they will use this network for their national backhaul bandwidth requirements.

While many people believe that this may hold Neotel back, Hay said that these discussions and regulatory issues do not influence the company’s progress at a practical level.

Hay further pointed out that Neotel currently has various live circuits on their network which should serve to show that the company can provide telecoms offerings despite the ongoing InfraCo discussions.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/1169.html