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Industry welcomes ADSL price reductions


Johannesburg, 02 Jun 2005

Telkom has announced further reductions in the cost of its ADSL offerings as of 1 August, with prices dropping between 18% and 31%, dependent on the product.

According to Telkom media relations specialist, Xolisa Vapi, the company`s HomeDSL 192 service will be reduced from R329 per month to R270, while the 384Kbps offering will come down from R449 to R359.

"The HomeDSL 512 and BusinessDSL 512 super-fast ADSL products - currently priced at R599 and R699 per month respectively - will be reduced to R477 a month," says Vapi.

Telkom also says prices for international private leased circuits via the SAT3 submarine cable and satellite will be reduced by 28%, having already decreased by 23% during 2004.

Ray Webber, a spokesman for the Communications Users Association of SA (CUASA) says: "It just goes to show what a little bit of competition can do!

"It is good to see that prices are moving in the right direction. It is finally getting to the point where the man in the street will be able to justify the expense involved.

"CUASA welcomes this move by the monopoly, as it will enable more people to use these services, and we do not believe this is the end of the road in terms of reductions, as SA`s prices are still unreasonably high in comparison to the rest of the world."

Rudolph Muller, founder of the myADSL Web site, says that while welcoming the reductions, he does not believe the timing of these announcements is random, as the regulator is shortly due to release its findings from the recent ADSL hearings.

"We are happy about the price drop and we do feel that it`s about time that this happened, but MyADSL still has an issue over the cost of a line rental from the monopoly, and feel this is something that should be dropped completely," says Muller.

"If ISPs are to compete on an equal footing with Telkom, they need access to the local loop, then they can begin to develop packages for customers that will enable true competition."

Muller points out that there is still the issue of Telkom offering slower and slower bandwidth packages to consumers, while the international trend is to increase bandwidth packages.

"In competitive overseas environments, we are seeing ISPs bumping users up to higher bandwidths free of charge, simply to keep them on board - so perhaps when Telkom launches its 1Mbps service we will see them doing the same."

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