Telecoms Action Group Advert To Run This Week 4
I urge everyone to buy this week’s issue of the Mail & Guardian. Inside you’ll find a full page ad, paid entirely with funds from donors (of which I am one), from the Telecoms Action Group bringing attention to the sorry state of telecommunications in South Africa. We’ve spoken about state of telecommunications here and things have not gotten any better.
We have in Telkom a government sanctioned monopoly intent on squeezing out as many billions in profit from consumers who have no choice but to use them. We have in Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe Casaburri a minister who has done nothing more than block any efforts to make telecoms more open. And finally in ICASA we have possibly the most toothless, incompetent telecoms regulator on the planet. Add it all up and not even the introduction of Neotel, our recently licenses and ye t to launch second fixed line network operator, will be able to make a change.
South African consumers have often let companies get away with exorbitant fees for substandard products and this ad is a rare occurrence of consumer activism.
So buy a copy of the M&G and show the advert to everyone you can. The more publicity the better.
Telkom, Smuts Ngonyama, other BEE players. They have every right to maximise their profits given the inequalities of the past. If this means not delivering a service, so what?
Nicely done Farrel, will take a look.
Unfortunately, when telkom maximizes profit with little thought of its customers, it tends to not only hurt the average public citizen (who feels it in their pockets), but probably stints economic growth as well.
That’s true. I’ve read estimates that our telecommunications landscape is responsible for retarding GDP growth by about 1%. When you consider that our GDP growth is between 4%-5% it translates to billion of Rands.