Comments on: Comeuppance time for Telkom?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:26:13 +0000

While the so-called analysts may have issues with Telkom pulling out of Telkom Media, have a look at another behemoth – Naspers – and see what is pulling them up by their boot-strings: MultiChoice.
Telkom’s strategy (prior to the current CEO) to diversify operations due to falling revenues of the core business (i.e. fixed line) was never a bad one – look at telco trends in the rest of the world.
Now they are pushing to move into mobile – a market already wrapped up by Vodacom and MTN. Are they gong to enter another price war like they attempted in Nigeria? Telkom’s currnet (overt the past two years) strategy for sustainability is a good MBA study on how to run a business into the ground.

By: Peter Walsh

Peter Walsh — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:06:43 +0000

If you are a large corporate or parastatal; with a large geographical footprint, you best hope and pray that Telkom keeps on delivering the goods. Which they happen to do better than most by the way! Ask me, we manage clients all over South Africa, spending ten of millions of ZAR per month, who would not be doing business without Telkom.

To be clear, I am not saying that Telkom don’t make mistakes, behave arrogantly or treat us all badly. I am just saying that they are the best of the bunch if you have a large geographical footprint.

And if you hate Telkom because they gave you bad service it is not going to change your dependence on them. Furthermore, the Mohammed’s of this world are being unrealistic in their expectations. No business can afford to deliver services for free. Never mind over such a large geographical area within such a small market. Comparing SA to the USA is just not going to cut it.

Despite the fact that most people have some kind of hate relationship with Telkom, South Africa will face serious economic growth problems if Telkom is stuttering along and not delivering on their basic services. And growth is all that is going to solve the unemployment, crime and education problems.

Everyone in SA including the VANS [or whatever they are now called] rely heavily on Telkom. The new infrastructure being laid down by Vodacom / MTN and Neotel will take many years to make a significant difference to our lives in any area outside of the main cities and economic hubs of activity.

At this moment in time and for the foreseeable future, there is no-one else that will deliver a MPLS / VPN or voice services to your company in both Kuruman and Sandton at the same time without making use of the Telkom infrastructure.

We can only hope and pray that Telkom don’t &*%$ it up in the short to medium term.

By: mohammed

mohammed — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:20:27 +0000

why dont they do away with line rental fees for the basic landline & the ADSL line rental & give us free local call for a start? also remove caps on their ADSL packages.
then see if their profits dont increase.
they dont seem to want to give us what we should be getting from them , then they complain when people go elsewhere for better deals.

By: Garth Michel

Garth Michel — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:09:25 +0000

I have little sympathy for Telkom. Telkom’s business practice of bleeding the average joe for as much money as they can has come to bite them on the arse. Now that average joe has some choice, they are taking their business elsewhere.

I welcome the day that LLU comes through.