Telkom doth protest too much

Mhambi read Telkom's response to Icasa's threat to forcing a cut in the wholesale fees that other operators paid to use its bandwidth with some interest. Telkom fielded Deloitte consultant Chris Williams:

"Forcing wholesale prices down would remove any desire by Telkom to invest in more infrastructure, he said.

An unexpected side effect of Icasa’s “remedy” would be to discourage other operators from building their own networks, further stifling the industry’s development, said Telkom’s specialist for regulatory and technical strategy, Richard Majoor.

Operators would compete by offering rival services over the same infrastructure only if that was cheaper than building their own. This would restrict the choices open to consumers."

Good point Chris, which is exactly why we need this regulation. Look at what happened in other countries. Having duplicate networks especially in the so called 'last mile' (the bit that goes to clusters of homes) is economically wasteful and prohibitively expensive to build.

Competition is only realisticly possible in long distance lines, as there are fewer of them used by thousands of people.

Personally Mhambi thinks regulation of the last mile is very difficult, and I have serious doubts about Icasa's ability to do so. Thats why Telkom should be nationalised like I explained here.

Telkom, please stop holding the country back.

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