Telkom refutes claims by Alan Knott-Craig
TELKOM has released a statement refuting comments made by Alan Knott-Craig in a column in the Business Times (25 October, page 6) titled “Why broadband is expensive in SA”.
According to the Telkom statement, the contention that Telkom enjoys a de facto fixed-line monopoly contradicts the obvious movement towards the liberalisation of the telecommunications landscape. That Telkom has embraced and welcomed this competition is also well recorded in media comment around this issue over a number of years.
Telkom’s statement also said it is also incorrect for the columnist to claim that “wireless operators are forced to use Telkom for their short-and-long haul transmission”. The reality is that operators have had the right to self-provide since September 2005 and Telkom is, therefore, no longer the sole provider of all their network capacity requirements.
The columnist’s comments with regard to international connectivity are also inaccurate. For example, from a Telkom perspective, between 2002 and 2009, there has been an IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) price decrease of 90% since the inception of the SAT3/WACS/SAFE cable system – S3WS for short. This means that Telkom has enabled the market to pass on price reductions to their customers.
Interestingly, a similar situation exists with regard to transmission links and transmission line costs. Over the last year, for instance, Telkom has significantly reduced transmission line costs enabling all mobile cellular operators (MCOs) to make substantial savings during this period.
Of further concern to Telkom is that a day after the publication of the article, Alan Knott-Craig distanced himself from it in an email to Telkom wherein he stated:
Excerpts:
“This is to confirm that I neither wrote nor contributed to the Article in the Sunday Times of yesterday which related to broadband tariffs as I recall. I was as surprised as I am sure you were to see an article with my photo and and name appear in the paper. The editor has apparently undertaken to print an apology/correction next Sunday” (email quoted verbatim).
I wonder how dense Telkom and this website have to be not to have put two and two together and realised that Alan Knott-Craig JUNIOR wrote the column and not his dad, Alan knott-Craig SENIOR! This is particularly obvious when you read the Business Times article and it clearly says ‘When I was at iBurst…’ – Alan SENIOR was never at iBurst. Why? Because, as this particuar article states, he is a former Vodacom CEO. Duh!
Ivan, I’m on your side, this is too funny. Probably a good thing that the author didn’t publish his/her name, since they must by now feeling fairly lame. In the future, how about some basic Journalism 101 fact checking. A very thin level of understanding of the sector you’re writing about will be better than none at all too.
Telkom now wants to act like it is in favor of the business world. Telkom wants to come to the party, only after competetion rises. Why haven’t Telkom been inovative before?
Haha! Telkom is so full of it. They are supposed to be a fixed line telephone service provider. They should stay the hell away from internet service provision in any capacity. LLU can’t come fast enough. I’d like to see anybody willing to actually pay a monthly fee for a scrap of copper cable then. I’ll use skype mostly by the way. What I want to know is if I were to lay my own gigabit UTP cable straight to the nearest exchange and was able and allowed to connect it in a way that would allow me to get service directly from SAIX. How much would I pay per gigabyte of information?