Cape Town, 09 Sep 2005
Despite having had close to 10 years to prepare for competition, Telkom resorts to using legal and extra-legal measures to fend off competition, says ICT lawyer Lisa Thornton.
She was responding to a report issued by international research firm Gartner yesterday that offered a downbeat view of the South African telecommunications sector.
Thornton says while she agrees with the overall sentiment of the analysis, she feels there are a number of errors.
She says the analysis fails to mention that Telkom has cut off services to some companies that are offering voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services. "It has threatened other VOIP operators and their customers with the same extra-legal or legal action, and it has failed to provide interconnection and access to numbers.
"Although, at least with regard to the former, Telkom is specifically required to provide interconnection to anyone who asks for it in terms of the Telecommunications Act," Thornton says.
Thornton points out that the Gartner analysis was wrong in saying that communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri had classified VOIP as data.
"What she did was lift the restriction that VANS [value-added network services] could only provide data. Now they can also provide voice - but only value-added voice - in other words, voice VANS," she says.
Thornton also doesn`t believe it is correct to say, as Gartner did, that VOIP has made any significant impact in the voice market, because issues like access to interconnection, facilities leasing at cost-based pricing and access to numbers have not been sorted out.
She says the report also fails to mention the fact that the regulator (the Independent Communications Authority of SA - ICASA) has been slow in acting on anti-competitive actions by Telkom and when it has done so, has often been successfully challenged on procedural grounds. In other words, she says, ICASA didn`t get its own procedures right.
Thornton says Telkom was licensed in 1997 after the passage of the current Telecommunications Act the year before, which means almost 10 years to prepare for competition, not the five years that Gartner says it has.
She says the second national operator`s ability to take customers away from Telkom will be limited by the long-term contracts Telkom has signed with key customers prior to the operator being licensed.
No response has been received from ICASA or the Department of Communications to the Gartner analysis.
A Telkom spokesperson says the company will respond early next week, as it has to incorporate a number of regulatory issues within its reply.
Related story:
Gartner downbeat about SA telecoms
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