Telkom to get tough on caps

By Rodney Weidemann for Telkom
Johannesburg, 19 May 2005

Telkom will soon institute add-on services for its broadband offerings, allowing users to buy additional bandwidth - but it will also get tougher on the caps.

Steven White, executive for product development at Telkom, says the plan is to make the standard bandwidth cap a threshold limit, after which users will have options such as buying further bandwidth, or making additional payments dependent on time spent online.

"This will be a more elegant solution to this problem, although it obviously means that we will have to be more rigorous in enforcing the bandwidth cap, and the current situation of unlimited local bandwidth will also come to an end," says White.

"Meanwhile, for those clients who require really high-speed broadband, we will also launch our 1Mb offering in August."

He says there are a number of other exciting innovations on the horizon, with the company holding WiMAX trials at present and also looking into the concept of what it calls the 'hot city`, which would involve making an area like the entire Sandton CBD a hotspot.

"Telkom Internet will soon add a voice over IP tool to its offering, along the same lines as Skype, as an improvement and add-on to the existing service," he says.

"We have already seen the first price reductions on our DSL services, and I can guarantee that they won`t be the last.

"DSL is a service that lends itself to critical mass - the more uptake we have in terms of this, the more it snowballs and the more prices will drop, so watch this space."