Listed telecommunications group Telkom’s response to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) findings on ADSL is a mixed bag, with the operator calling for another look into a specific area it describes as “flawed” findings.
Telkom executive for product development Steven White said on Tuesday that overall the company agrees with the document released by Icasa last Wednesday.
However, White said, Telkom finds it shocking that Icasa listened to the lobby groups and other players or “people who have never run a network” and, in the process, ignored the firm as an operator.
Icasa received 446 submissions as part of the enquiry into the provision of the ADSL service.
The regulator concluded that the charge for access should be levied at the inception of the service — after which it should be restricted to line rental. The rationale behind the abolition of levy access charges was that this rental (ranging from R270 to R480 for private users) posed a financial burden.
“Their argument is incomprehensible and ludicrous … we’ll contest it,” White said, noting that the abolition of the ADSL basic-access rental will make it impossible for Telkom to recoup the expenditure on the infrastructure deployment — which could, therefore, put the company in the awkward position of shutting down the service altogether.
“You also have investors and shareholders to consider and 100Â 000 customers you are serving. What do you say to them? You close down because you are not allowed to recover the R1-billion you have invested?
“We are unhappy about this … it will be impossible to carry on if we aren’t allowed to recover our costs,” he argued, adding that nowhere in the world is the basic access rental — in some form or another — not applicable.
“What we have always maintained is that this is scalable. So, with more people signing up, we’ll continue to see price reductions,” he asserted.
Icasa said it has not received any formal objection from Telkom. — I-Net Bridge