antitrust.co.za - Hellkom.co.za says it as it is.

An excellent article written up by Greg the owner Hellkom.co.za. The article brings up a lot of excellent points and has a very graphic picture that lets you know right away what the most important issues are.

"The South African Government owns almost 40% of Telkom, yet only 10% of South Africans have access to a phone line. Our internet and telephone charges are amongst the highest on this planet.
Prepaid cellular users pay twice as much as contract subscribers, yet they are the ones who can least afford it. All the cellular networks have a minimum of 80% prepaid users. Average revenue per user is a fraction of contract subscribers - indicative of the fact that people are aware it's too expensive to use prepaid as they would like to..."

Telkom prepaid customers cannot get ADSL. At last count there was one single ADSL line in Soweto. South Africa's broadband penetration rate is less than 1%. Even Morocco has better, faster and cheaper ADSL. We have the best and most advanced telecommunications network in Africa - but it's not nearly being used to its potential - it is being used against the people instead of for the people.

Our telecommunications regulator has no power to make change, and Telkom ignores them while our communications minister watches. This is the same communications minister who sleeps on the job, and doesn’t know what she pays for her communications bills or when the cellular prices go down - friends tell her. Telkom’s competition was supposed to be up and running in 2002 already but our minister bungled the whole process and stalled them for over three years.

Telkom sues or threatens to sue companies who attempt to offer the public cheaper communications - it should be in Government’s best interests to allow more competion for Telkom.

It is cheaper to call 18 international destinations from a Telkom line than it is to call a cellular phone in South Africa from the same line.

For the same price as only the line rental for 192k ADSL, you can get a 24Mbps ADSL connection (125 times faster, unlimited downloads) in the UK. This is due to the low prices, a strong regulator, local loop unbundling and inexpensive bandwidth. As mentioned in articles a few months ago, it's cheaper to fly to Hong Kong and download 100GB of data and put it onto DVD than to download it using ADSL in South Africa. Government probably missed that though.

Telkom controls the country’s international bandwidth - and we all have to go through Telkom - despite the fact that they charge four times as much as international counterparts for data travelling over the same line.

Telkom have retrenched over 50% of their workers the past five years, despite Government’s ‘pledge’ to decrease unemployment. Workload on staff has doubled and network faults have increased.

Government owns Sentech, a large chunk of Telkom, as well as a large chunk of their competition. Government wants to use Sentech as the core network for South Africa - but 60% of their expenses are for international bandwidth - which they get from Telkom!

Countless expert opinions, research reports, international commentary, articles and public opinions have come and gone - and yet nothing has happened. Government has promised change time and time again - and of course, nothing has happened. Government keeps mentioning '6% growth, 2010 world cup, outsourcing and cell centre hub' and the like, but at the moment they make a snail look like Michael Schumacher in the last race of the season. Telecommunications is essential to any country's growth. Look at the rest of Africa - do they have cheap telecommunications? No. Look at developed countries - do they have cheap telecommunications? Yes.

Telkom is not afraid of Government because they know they are being protected by them from anything that could affect their share price. So you guess what’s going on.

Original article on http://www.hellkom.co.za front page