I can think of no better company to get a massive fine other than
Telkom. They have slowed down South
Africa’s acceptance of the net at every corner while turning massive profits.
They are the ultimate epitome of what
makes monopolies so wrong.
Did you know they made R52.38 billion in profits (after tax!) from you,
the South Africa consumer, during the period 2001-2008? In 2006 they made over
R9 billion in profits after tax. Now get this, they are complaining that R3.5
billion is going to put their company under?
South Africa has often been ranked amongst the most expensive countries
in the world with regards to data costs. There has been pretty much one company
to blame and that is Telkom.
To see how Telkom has screwed you over go and read here.
We get to look at how it was cheaper to fly to another country, download data
and come back than download it in South Africa. You get to see how Telkom then
blames the people it sold the data to (the ISPs). You can also see how Telkom
tried to sue the parody website Hellkom (For R5 million). Lastly you can see
how they trebled their capacity for their “expensive” international bandwidth
as soon as competition arrived.
You could go read a case here from one writer
saying why Telkom should receive some clemency. Maybe you’ll see it in your
heart to find a little forgiveness and then you read this.
Yes, Telkoms counter offer was R20.5 million rand. It took them a day to make
that much in 2008. That is how little they respect the companies that have
fought against their unfair advantage for the last 7 years, that is how little
they care about the exorbitant amounts the consumer has had to pay because of
lack of competition and that is how greedy they are.
Their view was pretty much, “It’s in the past guys, common lets chill
and move on I mean what’s a few billion rand?”
The case was constantly delayed by Telkom from when it was launched in
2004. You can read more about the technical details of why the case came about
in the first place and how Telkom tried to delay it over here.
Ultimately Telkom deserve this
fine and should pay the full amount.
They deserve the fine because of their previous actions, which has been shown
by the commission, to be unfair. They also deserve to pay the full fine because
they have made exorbitant amounts of money from the consumer that they would
not have received if there was fair competition.
Frankly, it’s about time they were sorted out.
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