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ICASA ADSL Enquiry (Volume II) 14 April 2005
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CHAIRPERSON: Good morning ladies and gentleman, firstly I would like to
apologise for the late start but we seem to be have been held, so we are
already working 5 minutes behind schedule. For the convenience of those
who were not here yesterday, I will just reiterate that this is a Section 27
enquiry which is basically a fact finding mission so as to ascertain exactly
what is the nature of the ADSL service and if subsequent to this hearing we
feel the need that something must be done to address the ADSL service,
will then present what we call an outcomes document that will emanate
from inputs that we receive during the course of this hearing.
The procedure we will follow is that the respective presenter will make their
presentation and then the panel will ask questions, will also give the
members of the public an opportunity to then ask and present the
questions, questions of clarification questions, questions to better
understand the submission that has been put forth by the presenter.
So at this point in time I will had over to you, I think it is Mr Gross and I take
it all of you have a copy of the schedule. If you could proceed with your
presentation, first of all before you can start with your presentation, if you
could tell us what kind of ADSL subscriber you are, whether you are a
business or residential and secondly how long you have been an ADSL
subscriber. Thank you I hand over to you Mr Gross.
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MR GROSS: Good morning everybody, my name is Andre Gross I work for Avis
rent a car, which is part of the Barloworld group. I have a 512 ADSL
business connection at home. I am very fortunate in the aspect that I don’t
even pay for it, my company does because it allows me to connect to the
network at night to do maintenance in support if need be.
I have been ADSL subscriber now since – I was supposed to be since
January of 2004 but due to Telkom delays and delays I eventually ended up
being a subscriber August 2004. The first thing that I need to say about the
services even though I don’t pay for it, I have fellow people in my industry
they do have their own connections as the cost comparisons of ADSL
compare to anywhere else in the world, and this includes African countries
like Ghana, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Now according to the world we
are considered the Third World country and that is why Telkom always uses
the excuse that because we are Third World country the costs are so
expensive that is first and for most bullocks because our economy is not the
Third World economy.
If you are taking comparison the services offered by countries like, I use
Ghana as an example because I just love their website. If you going to have
the look at Ghana they don’t offer major speed on the ADSL, they have got
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2 offerings of 128 and 256 but the price of the 128 ADSL offering come at a
total cost of $60 a month, that is roughly a equivalent of R360.00.
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And what you get with that is ecstatic address, five e-mail addresses, anti-
span, good service support levels, I mean for as little exercise today we
going to actually make a support call to Telkom just say to guys you can
see the kind of service levels that we have to adhere to…(interjection)
CHAIRPERSON: Just for clarification you say you will make a call or you have
recorded…(Interjection)
MR GROSS: No, I will make a call while we are all here to talk of ADSL service
support and see who long it takes, just as a little exercise I have got half an
hour so you might as well joint me on this.
CHAIRPERSON: Is that going to form part of your presentation is that what
you are saying?
MR GROSS: No, it is not really part of the presentation but towards the end we
will make a call just that you can see how long it takes for them to answer
on the service.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay, I will allow that.
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MR GROSS: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: It is unconventional but if that is how you want to present
your …(Interjection)
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MR GROSS: The thing is I can sit here and I can…(Interjection)
CHAIRPERSON: Fair enough I have accepted that.
MR GROSS: Like I said in the comparisons to ADSL across the world we are
definitely pulling on the short end of the string here. And Telkom is dictating
to everybody and they seem to have caused the standard of 3G cap and
the cap is imposed and it has been done by all the other companies as well,
I don’t know why because first and for most I think one of the most
important gigabytes being in a democracy is your rights to information as
you please. Whether you’re the right to information that you are asking for
is pornography or not it is in material what that right is and what you want,
your democratic right should allow you to any information and constantly we
have been feed by press releases by Telkom that South African content is
good for us and we should only be concerned about South African content
and the world’s contents out there is not so important, that is not true.
As an individual I should be able to get to whatever I want whenever I want.
Now I have used the word pornography in this as a sentence because I
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always make people sit-up it is purely just a as a word to be used. The case
studies that I have been investigating on the different ADSL solutions and
stuff particularly in South Africa it tells us that the Telkom is really using
what we the tax payer had paid for over the last 10 years and the
infrastructure because the entire set 3 cable was paid for by the tax payers
money and Telkom is the one profiting and profiteering of this specific
cable. We have got 120G allocated to South Africa which is the 13% we
own of that cable and of the 120G South Africa only uses only 40G in total,
so 80G of Telkom is not prepared to use for the country.
Why is it that 80G of their total cable plus there is new cables that has been
laid on the Eastern border of Africa which will give the country a total of
another 260G so that leaves us on 380G of data throughput to Europe and
Asia and only a small portion of it is allocated towards us and Telkom is
charging exuberant fees to any other company that want to use a portion of
that. Why is that?
Like I said to you when that cable was laid I think it was in 1996, 1997,
1998 that cost South Africa $85 Million and we the tax payer paid for that,
not Telkom they did not spend a cent on the infrastructure it came out of
our pockets.
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Now since you guys called me to tell me that I must come to attend this
hearing I was really sitting and thinking on how we are going to blast
Telkom and how we are going to make them look bad, but I do realise at
the end of the day they are just company like any other and they have got
money and they have got to make profits. But I think the way it has been
done it is unreasonable especially on the ADSL side where staff gets
changed constantly, out of my own person experience since I have had the
service my account has been deleted due to an activity, no change control,
no conform just one day you get home and you switch on and it does not
work and you phone them but and they say oh no but you never use the
service so we deleted you even though you are a full paying customer. This
is what happened to me personally.
But that is not the only incident, about a month and half ago I also got home
one afternoon and switched on and nothing worked, I phoned Telkom and
they could not give me an answer they only gave me the answer the next
day, there was a new ADSL subscriber in our area and they just moved
whatever I had on my exchange onto for this person who and disconnected
me and they based this on the fact that I never used the telephone on the
ADSL because I only use it for data. So in my personal capacity I have
twice now been disconnected and like I said I don’t even pay for it, it is a
business ADSL and it is paid for by my company.
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I think the only way that we are going to get this problem sorted out in my
honest opinion is if we as South African really get together on the table and
say that this entire and we are not just talking ADSL we are talking
communication as a whole should become available, affordable for every
single person that can have it, not who can afford it, who can have it.
That is what it should become like because at the end of the day whether
your numbers are 100 and you charge them a 1000 or a 1 000 000 and you
charge him a 100 you will still make your profit, but as currently as Internet
is concerned ADSL is considered only for the lucky few and it should not be
like that because it is not expensive to maintain and it is expensive to run, it
actually cost Telkom nothing because they have paid for their network a
long time ago. So any money that they do make over this profits and
currently those profits are too high, the profit margins are really, it is not
even best practice to be honest with you. There is no consideration for us
as users of this technology and of this product.
And I have now to the fun part we are just going to make a quick call just to
see about the service levels because it is shocking, now I don’t know if
anybody here has actually phoned them and said okay cool remember it is
during day today you have go to answer the phone …(Interjection)
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CHAIRPERSON: We have two representatives from Telkom in the
audience…(Interjection) Let me just explain to you since I don’t know if you
were here yesterday but we had a presentation from Telkom they started
they were the first presenters, and then we will have a closing presentation
from Telkom on Monday, whereby they will be given an opportunity to
respond. I don’t know who has been allocated to deal with it but obviously
these are people from their regularity unit, so obviously they don’t deal with
every aspect of Telkom they just deal with regularity issues.
MR GROSS: I can personally vouch for having my phone ringing because I put
on speakerphone, I put it on and it rang for four hours before the call was
answered by Telkom support.
CHAIRPERSON: Is it not going to affect the recording system?
MR GROSS: No, it should not, just as a matter it should probably work because
that is how Murphy’s Law works. Remember this is a service you pay a
thousand bucks plus for a month, that is a lot of money. Maybe we will be
lucky today. (making a call) That was quick that was really quick, but do
take down this number and try this at 17:00 when most people get home
from work and it is a complete different story.
CHAIRPERSON: Well we will be here at 17:00 tomorrow.
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MR GROSS: That’s it thank you.
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CHAIRPERSON: Mr Gross, you have spoken about examples of where the
cost is cheaper Ghana and in Egypt in your written submission and now
you have dealt with Tunisia. If you could please give us the web addresses
because when you are ready to actually try to find out exactly
where…(Interjection)
MR GROSS: That is one of the things that I wanted to do was actually give all the
presentation but I don’t know how many member they were going to be and
printing is quite expensive. But what you can do is on google, you can do a
straight forward google search for, it is call Ghana Telecoms and Egypt is
straight forward just type Egypt plus ADSL in your google search and then it
will actually take you t the home pages of this different countries with their
different offerings and their pricing in structures. Most of their companies in
Africa have their pricing straight in dollars in normal US dollars.
CHAIRPERSON: Now we will duly do that, now with regard to – you have
argued about your service been deleted you have raised two incidents
where your services was deleted, now you said it happened twice in the
period of, well you have been on the service since August last year 2004,
how long did they take before they actually remedy the problem with the
first one?
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MR GROSS: The first one took 48 hours because the guys that created the
account were on holiday or leave, so that took full two days and the other
one they fixed it the next morning and it is purely because I phoned them
literally every 5 minutes until they got so sick an tired of me that they got a
technician out to come make the changes on the exchange again, to put
me back.
And the funny part is the engineer that assisted me was very helpful and
very good and said to me that is a common occurrence where people are
just been moved from one, whether you are active or not being moved and
given to other people and I actually do believe him because we have got
our problems regarding this and we talk amongst each other with the
problems we have.
CHAIRPERSON: And then could you tell me do you have the specific dates?
MR GROSS: I don’t have the specific dates out of my head but the calls
themselves should have been logged because I work with Avis rent a car
we have a proper business agreement with Telkom to start of with, so it
should be in our log list and if you can afford e-mail address I can actually
give you this specific dates but out of my head I cannot remember.
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CHAIRPERSON: Okay, you can send it to the very lady you send you
submission to please. I will open to the panel to ask you questions.
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MS BULBULIA: Since as a matter of interest what kind of modem are you
using?
MR GROSS: I used to use the normal Telkom ADSL ports modem that they give
you with installation, but recently my company has moved me over to the
new IS ADSL offering purely because it is a router, it is much more secure
and it is managed a whole lot more better.
MR RUPLAL: You said that the set 3 cables Telkom only uses 40G and
80G is left untouched, do you have any information to substantiate that?
MR GROSS: Yes, there is information available for that you can get the
information on the various Telecoms website that are available on the
Internet as well as big article that was done about this by the Financial Mail
of all companies they did investigations 2 years ago regarding the situation
of bandwidth in South Africa.
MR RUPLAL: Why would they not use 80G, do you have any idea?
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MR GROSS: I can only speculate and for me it is purely on the basis that they try
to squeeze every little cent they can out of us for the list amount of the
bandwidth available or the least amount of the cost on their behalf. I think it
is a standard company practice at the end of the day. I mean South Africa
has got a big problem and this is not just Telkom, we have a serious
problem in this country where there is no such thing as healthy competition
in the market and in the environment because most company sit around the
table and they discuss pricing together and they say okay, you don’t go
more than this I don’t go more than that and everybody is happy. So it is
just a question of they are trying to get the most out of the list that is what it
is. I mean why make it available for the entire country if I don’t have to.
CHAIRPERSON: Wouldn’t that be because they have to pay for usage?
MR GROSS: That is immaterial because usage now even if they break out onto
any the European circles, those costings involved are minute compared to
– I mean lets have a look at it this way, I know for a fact IS purchased 45Mb
pipe between London and New York it is costing them $3000 a month for
45Mb pipe that is R18 000 a month.
I work for Avis we have got 1Mb international link or 512 international 1Mb
local and our service cost more than that more than 45 times the speed and
what we have got we are paying more than the actual link between London
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and New York. So the Telkom says that it is going to cost them a lot, that is
bullocks because then it should cost a for all the African countries to
shouldn’t it.
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MR KGAMEDI: Thanks, so your ADSL service, you mainly use it for after
hours?
MR GROSS: Obviously mainly after hours, yes.
MR KGAMEDI: And Telkom has eluded to the fact that every 24 hour there
is a reset on the system, how does that affect you?
MR GROSS: That reset happens after 23:00 at night and I mostly by the time
already in bed getting ready for the next day, so that never really affected
me, I cannot say that it has. But it would be better if people had static
addresses as opposed to dynamic because that empowers you to host at
your own house, that empowers you to ran your own mail server. Where
you know you don’t have to pay other companies a huge amount to host
your mail there, and host your server there, you can do it from the
convenient of your own house, you can manage it and just work for yourself
at the end of the day.
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CHAIRPERSON: Mr Gross, we had a great debate yesterday about what
throughput speeds Telkom should be required to guarantee. You said in
your submission that you think they should provide those speed but have
you got any suggestion as to what speeds?
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MR GROSS: Well let us look at it this way technology is changing, and there are
more and more multi media content available this days in a website this
days are flashing and they have got various on them and all kinds of, so at
the end of the day you have got to be able to match whatever the website
through at you and this is going to change and bandwidth is going to
happen more and more.
But I personally think of 512 connection as a starting point and 256
upstream would be perfect but Telkom, it is not question of them
guaranteeing you that speed it is the question of not shaping it like they are
currently doing, the shaping is the problem.
CHAIRPERSON: Elaborate please?
MR GROSS: First and for most for recreation I am sure there are some people
that have argued this, who have set this if there were any yesterday. I also
as a past time play games on line, now I cannot joint any server anywhere
in the world because Telkom shapes the traffic. I can in local but let me be
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honest with you local is nice because most of the guys we are friends that
we few and far between like I have said to you before the Internet in South
Africa is considered as luxury so very few people have it, there is not a
mass of people that you can interact with on line at night because of the
cost and cannot go overseas because you have been shaped. Because
South African content is good for you and you should not have to worry
about the rest, it is not true it should not be like that.
CHAIRPERSON: But you have no problem with accessing local contents
because we heard submissions yesterday that nationally people are also
having a problem …(Interjection)
MR GROSS: Yes, there are problem and I know that the problem are Telkom is
saturating the contention ratios, in other words they are helping too many
people on to a local, they are definitely doing that. I mean they blatantly told
us this in a presentation when they submitted to us that they have got a
contention ration for companies 4:1, this is not even an ADSL this is on
normal lines, now I can guarantee an ADSL as we probably looking
between 25 and 35 contention rations guaranteed and that is why so many
people have local content issues.
CHAIRPERSON: You would not have proof of this contention ratio putting
…(Interjection)
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MR GROSS: I personally wont have proof but I do have a friend that has ADSL
connection that is suffering from this, from 7H00 in the morning until 17H00
in the afternoon, his line is perfect come 18H00 at night that line just dies
local as well everyday without exception. Telkom has been out of his
premises to look at the ADSL, every time they tell him it is a line fault and it
is not a line fault because is works 100% between 7H00 and 17H00 when
there is nobody else using it. So definitely even sharing happening,
occurring on that.
CHARPERSON: Now when you make your oral presentation with regard to
the cap you said everybody has a right to information, in your written
submission you suggested 30G be the cap, so from your submission it
seems as if you advocating that it increased 10 times from what it is?
MR GROSS: Like I said to you what is happening is I want a video conference
parents in law in Saudi Arabia but I cannot really do that because if I go to a
conference with them for too long it is going to completely kill my cap and
for the rest of the month I cannot do anything accept for local. So got to be
very conservative and I am not saying that a cap is a bad thing but a 30G
cap would be a lot more suited for us than a 3G cap because 3G traffic is
nothing, my mail surfer at work does 6G everyday.
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CHAIRPERSON: And are you bench marking this 30G on any …(Interjection)
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MR GROSS: That is the thing, I have been looking at all the, in the UK they have
120G caps so they have got the 4G cap a day per person. Now granted, we
are on the most sudden tip of African we are very far away and bare in
mind that that extra 100 or 200km a cable probably does cost Telkom a bit
more than it should, but a 30G cap is more reasonable.
CHAIRPERSON: Now with respect to the issue that you raise about what uses
you can actually use the ADSL service, yesterday we heard a presentation
from Telkom and they said that they expect that with respect to the shape
service you actually use it for certain specified uses and then they obviously
have an unshaped service, which is also capped I am sure know about
it…(interjection)
MR GROSS: Yes, it is the 4G one.
CHAIRPERSON: Now they suggested that obviously they intend for the
subscriber to use it for a certain specified usage. Now would you think it is a
better approach for them to specify so that when you enter into a contract
with them you know full well as to what the uses are?
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MR GROSS: Absolutely, but I can guarantee you last year with this whole shape
thing that happened most people did not know about it, it was just done on
the sly and when people started realising that that something is going on
Telkom then they brought out the statement no they are doing this to cap
the couple of bad apples that are abusing the system. Now unfortunately
they will always be people that use the system but it really does not mean
everybody.
MR KGAMEDI: You also heard arguments yesterday that your local
consumption actually affects your 3G cap?
MR GROSS: Yes, that is unbelievable. If I, they have implemented a service
where you can down load content locally but it comes towards your cap, it
is crazy absolutely crazy because even though you haven’t break in out
onto the international portion it is going to affect your international portion 2
or 3 weeks down the line, very good point thank you for raising that.
CHAIRPERSON: But the website says the exact opposite that it should not
affect this international line?
MR GROSS: Guaranteed it does, guaranteed. If you surf local content it counts
towards your 3G cap. Look once you have hit the cap and you serve local
you still can but that entire usage before you hit through 3G it is definitely.
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CHAIRPERSON: Okay, now just one other issue on the issue of abuse, we
have heard from Telkom that obviously they have certain specified uses
that they expect the ADSL service to be applied towards, in your research
have you come across any other ADSL service that has the same
restriction in relation to so-called “abusive users”?
MR GROSS: Look regardless of where you are in the world, there are always
going to be people that are going to abuse this, no matter what and they
have been experienced it in countries like Canada, where they have also
implemented a 30G cap and that is why I have based it on 30. But look at
the UK they have got 120Gb cap and do you know how much content 120G
is, that is plenty that is 240cd’s worth of data that I can accumulate every
month if I need to, that is a lot of data.
CHAIRPERSON: Then in your written submission you also deal with the
service level agreement, you remember the question that relates to that.
You say that you require, that it must deal with line speeds, uptime, quality
assurance as well as decent support, do you care to elaborate on the
decent support?
MR GROSS: Decent support would be what I am talking about now because I
have actually got my phone bill, I have got four hours, my phone rang for
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four hours before Telkom ADSL answered it. I started to dial on it at 17H30
and 21H30 that night they answered for the first time…(Interjection). I put it
on speakerphone and put it next to my PC and I let it ring, four hours.
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CHAIRPERSON: Could we have a copy of that phone?
MR GROSS: Absolutely I will submit that.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay, on your written submission you say you were holding
for 27 minutes?
MR GROSS: That is the other incidents that is just one of them.
CHAIRPERSON: And you would not know what time of day it was?
MR GROSS: It was after 17H00, you don’t know if your line is working when you
are at work, but will know when you get home. So either Telkom is going to
change the way ADSL works and have a better supporting after hours than
what they have during hours, because if I am at work there is no way I am
going to know if my lines are working or not, I get home at 17:00 I switch it
on and it is not working and I am not getting response from Telkom.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, any questions are there any questions from the
public? Thank you very much Mr Gross. If we could please have Tony
Mechin. Mr Mechin if you could firstly tell us what kind of ADSL subscriber
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you are whether business or residential and how long you have been an
ADSL subscriber then there after proceed with your presentation.
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MR MECHIN: I am not Telkom ADSL subscriber, I use my …(Inaudible)
and since November or December something like that very recently I have
only been back in Johannesburg 6 months…(Interjection)
CHAIRPERSON: So you are saying you are not Telkom ADSL subscribers?
MR MECHIN: I am not a Telkom ADSL user, in fact my presentation is not
specifically about Telkom, I do have to address a lot of problems but it is
more to do with broadband, which I understood to be the centre of the
question which is how we are going to use the broadband and what is
broadband.
CHAIRPERSON: Not as such, this is why initially that we clarified yesterday
that really what we are looking into is the Telkom ADSL service, I don’t
know actually if you had a look at the discussion document, that was a
trigger for this process. We have a discussion document with various
questions in relations with Telkom ADSL service. …(End of Tape 1)
MR MECHIN: Yes, that is where I answer to.
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CHAIRPERSON: Are you answering to those questions?
MR MECHIN: I do address some of those questions and I can stop anytime
you want …(Interjection)
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CHAIRPERSON: Because the only issue really we will address is not
broadband in general and this is what we clarified with Telkom yesterday.
We are really dealing with Telkom ADSL service, but go ahead let us hear
what, maybe there are issues of clarification but we will restrict our
comments only to the Telkom ADSL service.
MR MECHIN: Essentially I do address the whole broadband concept from
slightly different view because I was very concerned about what I was over
seeing. I have been involved in this before in Zimbabwe and it was getting
to the critical point where people was saying really silly things and no one
really looking at the long term implications or what was going on there was
much more about muscling and with all due respect I think when you make
a phone call like that you are looking for trouble because you know what is
going to happen because it is better to bring …(Inaudible) recording. It is
getting to the point where it is becoming personal…(Interjection)
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CHAIRPERSON: I will allow you to proceed, let us hear what you have to say
but obviously if it does not relate to this to what the subject matter we wont
really quiz it, we will just take it as presented.
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MR MECHIN: Okay, I will go through it and as soon as you want me to
stop. Just to tell you something about myself, essentially what I am talking
about is someone who knows how to use the Internet. I have build my first
website 9 years ago. My …(Inaudible) I am one of the Africa’s first multi
media CD ROMS, my first product was lunched on apple2 which was
before the IBM PC came out.
So I have been doing this business for some time. So I would see myself as
a kind of person who is a typical user and …(Inaudible). Very quickly I just
want to take you through some history, it is 60 years this year that
effectively just when satellites were invented and that is an example how
quickly things change. It was 20 years later the first satellite was put up and
everything we are talking about is fundamentally based on this technology
and set over the last 60 years of that all this has happened.
And there are fundamental thing that I think applied to all of the things
about the view as ICASA addressed, but particularly the problem with the
Internet and the one is the change it happen so quickly, I mean you can
legislate right know for topics that in 2 or 3 years time wont exist anymore.
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The other thing that I find quite of interesting is the variety rules is that any
restrictions that apply to the Internet the system takes care of it . Chip
censorship like damage and it works around it and then the other thing is
that I believe that the Internet demonstrates very strongly that Telkom
should be decentralised it is exactly the right example of why monopolies,
duopolies limit the Internet. But what I want to speak about in my
presentation I divided down to three things which is my comment on South
African broadband generally, comments on some of the things that I read
last time. I am afraid one of the things I was only told at 16H30 yesterday
that I was actually speaking, so please excuse my very hurried
presentation.
And I would like to quickly address the problem of this last mile which I think
is that may not particularly relate to Telkom in broadband sense but I think
there are some technical changes coming. Just to tell you what is
happening with me and I think this is typical of what is happening right
across the range the bandwidth that is available is impact a very strongly on
a number of users, which means to me there is not enough bandwidth
providers and I think that applies right across Africa generally but particular
South Africa.
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Another question was to do with service level agreements. I think in Telkom
submission they said that they did not know any service level agreement for
Internet service, I think that is what I read and I have to say that is very
strange because computers right through the beginning had service level
agreement, everything on the Internet everything is provided. When you
buy time, when you buy space you actually have guarantees of uptime. And
I think this are five of this basic things that should be looked you should
have a minimum speed and it is not up to me to say what that is, I would tell
you that I am quite happy with my 128K My Wireless. I live on the Internet
just as a matter of interest a started 100M, I measured yesterday afternoon.
Now that 1 …(Inaudible) doing 1 upgrade and a little bit of software
downloading and listening to the radio for 8 hours or 9 hours it was a
100Mb.
Now if I had two machines or three machines which is a small business
system, which is what Telkom says they address you physically could not
run updating properly, you could not run through your four systems with
updating software correctly with that 3Gb cap. So I find it very strange, cap
limit. The things like maximum …(Inaudible) and contention and so on I
think they probably need address by everybody else.
As I said that there are three ways that ICASA can take control of this and
this are just thoughts of me thinking, the one is that you can take control of
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this external pipes, I don’t know if that is in your mandate and the other one
is that you have got to allow satellite technologies to exist to be used and
the third one is giving ISP access at the actual prices.
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Just to get to Telkom in particular, I was talking about how their offering is
geared towards the small business market. One other thing that I read was
that something like 20% of the people are unhappy about the 3G cap, that
in normal, non-monopoly situation that would be a real concern 20% of your
customer are unhappy about something that is comparatively easy to fix
that you can charge for extra bandwidth. It is a very high percentage of
unhappy customers and they say only 1 and 5 customers are unhappy, I
would consider that a very high percentage.
There was also comment where they say that a comparative of our study of
our friends in those comparative in my ADSL website relating to home
ADSL 386 and 384 and DSL 512 were placed first and second so we
cannot be doing much wrong, that surely is relating to comparison with local
suppliers who are very recent on the market, don’t have the infrastructure,
and I would have thought they should be looking at the international market
and they would know that better. It would seem that after years of digital
conversions the mobile phone phenomenal cheap call back systems
internal use of, and they are using voice internally just by globalisation
cause by Government for free trade, Telkom does not see how important
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the services …(Inaudible) and the services are and how vulnerable they are
as a customer anger ….(Inaudible)
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I should apologise but in my previous submission I passed a comment
about Telkom being residue of previous regimes , that was a very silly
comment I think there is a lot of people in Telkom and I know some of them
who are trying very hard, it is a business like any other. But it does
concerned me that it is monopoly left over from that kind of situation.
I would say that essentially communication system should be very similar to
the taxing system as used in South Africa and if we can have minimum
regulation, massive competition then we would get very competitive results
and this support concerns me as we are still heading towards two major
suppliers, three minor suppliers, this is not the way the Internet grows and it
is not the way to maximise it, I will get back on to that.
This is one of my major concerns about Telkom submission is that, they try
to say that the line rental is specifically for basic telephony systems. I don’t
know what everybody thinks it is a basic telephony system is but, 20 years
ago or 50 years ago it did include automatic changes, 30 years ago it did
not include fax transmissions, 20 years ago it did not include ability to
dialup the Internet this are basic telephonic services today and a year ago
did not include …(Inaudible). So I don’t know how, that to me is straight
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marketing statement that as far as I am concern the copper line is paid for it
does not matter how many users is been applied for, it is the biggest
problem I think that all of this Telkom companies are facing is this massive
loss, they are all facing this and there is nothing that can be done about it.
This is something they have to bite the bullets and they have to change
their business , easy as a classic descriptive…(Interjection) and just
millions of people died in agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution,
so millions are going to go hungry now and it is really very important that no
limitations be placed on the Internet because this is a very major change
that we are facing, any limitations, I believe in limitations directly impact on
our use of it and it is really very along term rolling over impact.
The comments about this was that I picked this up at from my ADSL
website. Extreme content is just around the corner and that will bang the
cap, right now everybody they want to spank the person, which is
supposedly to do the file showing systems that allow non copy write
materials to be copied.
However, next year the thing that we are discussing now that are been
limited by person to person sharing, well this shaping that everybody talks
about. A lot of technologies that are coming out now use this stuff and
these technologies are being impacted by decisions made now and there
won’t be changes for next year or 3 years, which means it will take us to
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couple of years to get over that and by then we will be further back behind
the line. One other thing I was concern about was this statement with one
of the people saying that they affectedly …(Inaudible) on the Telkom
services but they are not allowed to see the documentation and the
information is been hidden from them, now this is exactly what is happening
in the computer business and through Microsoft and that has been the
major problem. We have many other monopoly that controls the business
they control the information and it is very important that this information be
allowed to be transferred it should be transparent, and I have no idea how
you make that happen because it has taken years with Microsoft and I don’t
think they …(inaudible) I find this particularly interesting, there are hundred
and fifty million broadband users right now, I guess you have heard that
figure already, but there is now 60 000 ADSL users in South Africa.
I don’t know what the break down is but it certainly does not look
particularly good for me, some countries are looking at 15% of the Internet
users are really on broadband. We are long away from that by a margin.
Telkom made a comment that when Canada started using limiting
bandwidth to cap the bandwidth …(Inaudible), their bandwidth limit was
60G as far as I could find out that Canada used, which is a long way from
the 3G. I don’t know if you want me to go on with this, I basically would like
to talk quickly about …(Inaudible) I know it is not exactly the ambit of this
but it applies because I believe that it is already happening this year and
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next year is that …(Inaudible) will become the last mile and the regulations
as they are right now …(Interjection)
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CHAIRPERSON: Just to let know Mr Mechin, I am going to I am just going to
indulge you until the next speaker’s turn comes up, which is 10H00
because this is your allocated time so …(Interjection)
MR MECHIN: Safely what is happening is that wire fire and wire max and
all of this wireless technologies are limited from expanding in South Africa
because they are not allowed to cross, as I understand they are not allowed
to cross boundaries line, so the properly boundary lines are your limits.
So what is going to happen is and I have done this already in my building
and I set up a WI-FI network everybody inside my building if they have got
a computer can get on the WI-FI and have a free Internet access part of the
service that I do because that is what I do about websites. However I
cannot stop you from the other side of the road, …(Inaudible) the cars and
accessing the Internet nor would I personally want to, there is a technical
way to stop them doing it as long as with me providing the service that I
want to provide internally.
So you cannot stop people doing this you can go around basting people
sitting in motorcars on the Internet but it is just not feasible, and this is the
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one this is the technology that is the last line the last bit of the WI-FI of this
broadband network. I will also very quickly talk about how quickly this one
of my believes that WI-FI technology can be split across the Lalise, it is a
little village in Transkie, which I work out of Port St Johns which is why a lot
of my experience.
And after the Tsunami crisis, in 5 days a local company had got Internet
access working through WI-FI. They set up WI-FI can …(Inaudible) across
the city they had the UN connected all within 5 days, now you physically
cannot do that and this is emergency situation, I believe we have an
emergency situation place like Port St Johns, all this small towns where you
cannot buy MTN vouchers in the machines because they have run out and
they are not going to get refilled. It is all that kind of level support that is
happening out there from the big companies, and I believe that can be done
in a local situation using WI-FI connection, I believe we could set up WI-FI
network for Port St Johns is charging R150.00 per user excluding a
computer includes bandwidth, person supporting them and the wireless
connection.
There are all kinds of …(Inaudible) from this kind of technology and
particular I am talking about WI-FI been able to go outside the boundary
and we have got cameras, which can be used for security obviously for
Web and then you got internal communication, which is free on the wireless
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network. We have got better education I don’t know what happened with
Telkom, with its reduction prices to schools but I haven’t had anybody
getting that I guess you would be looking at that.
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And then particularly important for the use of the broadband in the rural
areas is providing a technology in the rural areas, you keep people in there
people will stay because they will start playing with computers, and you can
see how Port St Johns is, 3 or 4 places where the kids are just been given
computers and they are trying to run businesses and most of the times they
haven’t paid their phone bill and the computers are broken but they are
fixing them, they are learning how to do this things and they are staying
there, maybe 10 kids are staying Port St Johns, because they have
something to do.
Most co-ordinate it allows you to improve communication around the
country, that is what spelling out of the broadband into sort of wireless
networks and that will allow publication of cultural material, you can do
direct marketing based on the places like Port St Johns. And of cause the
drop in communication costs. I believe that you got a unique opportunities
and this are the three quotes that came out of President Mbheki’s meeting,
this you have this opportunity to address each one of this three things by
reducing the monopoly situation and I really hope that you do. Thank you
for your patience me talking about something that is not really on topic.
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CHAIRPERSON: Just one short question Mr Mechin, with regard to what is the
subject matter of today’s enquiry is, are you saying that 20% of Telkom
subscribers are unhappy with the Telkom ADSL service from your research,
am I correct?
MR MECHIN: Only the cap, they are unhappy with the cap that Telkom's
techno that, I personally think 3Gb is, well if I am doing a 100Mb on a single
machine on an afternoon and that is just literally updating my system it is
nothing special than if you are running a small business network 4 or 5
machines and you are just up dating Microsoft you are pushing the cap
already. But I mean I am not a technical person I am a content provider I
am a user maybe power user bit essential, I am a content provider and
someone else would have to do those statistics.
MS BULBULIA: Are you currently using my wireless and you are satisfied
with that service?
MR MECHIN: Yes, well I mean I come out of the Transkei and prior that
Zimbabwe so I am kind of really, but yes I can listen to my radio, I can
download it is adequate, I am getting anything from 50 to 110 transfer
ratios, supposed to 128 and it is very strange the spirit of, my best time to
download it is in the afternoon thinks like that it is really strange. So I just
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think that it is cheating trouble still and everybody is busy trying to learn
how to but the beats together but it does not help us for the next 2 years
while they are learning how the business really does work and what we are
competing with.
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CHAIPERSON: Thank you very much Mr Mechin, next presenter Liam Smit
is Liam Smit here?
MS BULBULIA: No.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay, there has been a drastic change to today’s schedule,
the next presentation will be the presenter at 13H00 who is Wayne
Kaminsky and the other presenters after Wayne have cancelled. So the
presentation from 13H00 to 14H00 will be the last presentation for today.
We did try to move around other presenters but they refused to be moved
around or they cannot be contacted, so after the 13H00 to 14H00
presentation will only resume again tomorrow.
We had last minutes cancellation so that is beyond our control. So we will
take a break now until lunchtime so we will adjourn until 13:00. Thank you.
(BREAK)
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CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, is there any one by the name of Wayne
Kaminsky?
MR KAMINSKY: Yes, good afternoon.
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CHAIRPERSON: Firstly let me welcome you to this hearing before you have a
ICASA the panel that are staging the enquiry into the ADSL service, let me
just reiterate for those who were not here this morning or yesterday. This
enquiry is specifically into the ADSL service, specifically as according to the
discussion paper that was published by ICASA and I am sure you have
responded to that with a written submission.
What we would like, this is just an enquiry once we have completed this
process then we will come up with the findings document, which will then
guide committee to go to from here.
MR KAMINSKY: When will that be by, quite soon or …(Interjection).
CHAIRPERSON: As soon as possible, maybe let’s leave it at soon as
possible. What I would really like you to do is as if you start with your
presentation if you could introduce yourself tell us what kind of an ADSL
subscriber you are business or residential and how long you have been a
subscriber for the ADSL service. I wont introduce the entire panel our
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names are right in front of us, and if you are making a presentation if we
can have it in a written format we would appreciate that.
MR KAMINSKY: I just have a couple of certain notes written down.
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CHAIRPERSON: Okay, that is fine.
MR KAMINSKY: My name is Wayne Kaminsky, basically I run a company
called Shifting media, we do web technologies some very involving Internet
all the time. At the moment I have got just a set of a homemade ADSL
connection, I have previously had home and business ADSL connection
because I just do my business home lately, so I have been using ADSL for
the about I would say almost 2 years. I have been …(inaudible) for quite a
while of the last few years I have been in the UK so I have experience other
markets and in the US, I cannot compare those markets.
CHAIRPERSON: Now you can proceed with your presentation.
MR KAMINSKY: Okay, firstly in general I just want to give some break down
on where my thinking comes from. In about 1997 I got involved in the
Internet and I just found out it was an incredible media modem it looked like
it was going to be thee medium we were still using our little slow modems to
dialup in those days, but it was still very effective, we could see there was
an excitement about the Internet there was certainly sort of business growth
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businesses could deliver documents to each other very quickly in those
days, there was also sorts of growth on the Internet and all kinds of things
and in about 1997 I moved over onto the web because previously I was in
advertising and graphic design.
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In about 1998 I moved over to London and when I got to London I find that
actually in South Africa our thinking was ahead of the British. When I
moved over there and started working with companies in the UK, I find that,
their thinking was actually behind us they wont exposed to the product that I
actually I was over here because when we find something that we like here
we like to adopt it quickly and we like to through and get involved in it.
So in 1998 as so we were ahead of the UK, I moved to the UK and I was
there for 6 years and I have only moved back properly in the last year, and
half I have been back and forth, but while I was at a very prevalent in the
UK and nice to see was it about 1999 properly then, the Government
decided overseas there was massive opportunity in the Internet. The
Government in the UK see it as their opportunity to provide the service to
public to Education and to business and they got very involved in the sort of
E-Government and campaigns over there and making sure that BT, the
telecommunication right over there, was forced to provide good services
because at that point in 1999 they were rolling out ADSL slowly, the
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Government got involvement so they sat okay now we need the rollout
quickly there is a good things about the Internet, we need to get quickly.
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The Government got behind it and a started rolling up very quickly. Initially
instead of 2000 I was paying less that 40 pounds a months for a very fast
Internet connection and it was really decent it was reliable up all the time
and no cap. So if we look at just the initial thing we are off below 40
pounds, I mean if we look at today’s cost anything instead of a maximum of
R450.00 really per month for a very good service.
In the UK my experience was things were fast and faster prices got cheap
and cheaper but some are left instead of now you can get Internet services
from as low as 19 pounds a months it is even cheaper than that it is only
now that it comes free or for certain service depending on what you buy,
but actually you can get between 19 and 25 pounds a month you are
getting up to 4Gb connection, which is incredibly fast and precisely why
does it make a difference, it is because it’s response ties is that when you
are working on the it becomes immediate there is no waiting and it feels like
you actually sort of sitting there on someone’s network or sitting there with
the actual company it unable video on the Internet it enable people to have
conference calling on the Internet it enable us to sort of do, when you are
building websites to build very advanced websites.
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What it finally UK compeer to South Africa is that because the service
providers over there provide a good service, the average user demands
more and more and when they demand more and more they always had to
go to web companies and IT companies and service companies and
Telecommunication companies to provide those services, and really those
generate a massive revenue.
So any way came back to South Africa now as I have moved back here my
first thing was Oh my goodness my connection is so slow, and I have got
this 3Gb cap when I working with my office in London and we try to upload
files back and forth and it cause major problems because the connection
would not hold out for a very long and the quality was bad, the speed was
bad, it would take me the a whole weekend to download certain files, which
I knew my client had taken up to her 15 minutes upload.
Now on the cases lately I am working with certain clients in the UK they
were sitting there about their presentation and they needed few changes, it
takes me 45 minutes to upload a file when they download it or they re-
upload a file of the same size, we are looking at about a minute to 2
minutes to upload the same sort of variation. So we are looking massively
different service. Now South Africa just need to get to that point where we
do have a better service provider, I mean Telkom are not providing the
service that I fell we should actually have. I feel Telkom are there to provide
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a service and a service should actually operated in the background quietly,
should be a supporting structure to business, to education and to every
single person in the country.
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When you give that freedom basically what happens is, when you got
freedom to do what you need to do and there isn’t sort of silly caps and
rules around thing and regulations and prices, you find that it just creates
new industries. I mean we certainly do need to create jobs in this country,
we certainly do need to attract foreign revenue and it got to the point where
certain foreign clients in the US and the UK saying to you we battle working
with you just because thing, you know there is always a little problem, when
I need to up load a file or send a big file and if I need it quickly we cannot
do it or if I need to have a video conference with them, I cannot do it my
connection just wont last.
So I am in a real disadvantage to the rest of world basically to be honest, I
still go back to the UK every now and then and we still have very good
connections over there. Right now to be honest I spend about R2000 a
month myself personally just to make sure I am on the Internet. I have got a
number of connection because I cannot trust any single connection here,
which is really sad, I got to have an iBurst connection, I have got to have
my sort of Internet connection, I have a wireless cards so that I can go into
sort of news café if everything else fails I go news café or something like
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that to actually access Internet as a last resort, but I rely on been connected
basically and more and more people especially around the world rely on
been connected completely. We don’t just connect once a day to the
Internet we rely on every moment of the day to be on line.
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My clients know when I am sitting at my desk they can see a little sort of
panel that comes up and it shows that I am there. Everything that I do relies
on me been on line I loss work very often if I am not on line so if something
goes down, or if my Internet connection is slow or something happens
between something I can loss money. So one of the main things there
when you look at, it is getting a faster, cheaper, better connection here.
I would say at the moment with my company here I have to downgrade my
level of services for the South African public. In the UK I was providing
certain services and fairly advanced services and people all understood
them, when I go to company and did presentation for them they understand
them because what happened is because of money has been spend in the
UK, because people are been exposed to good connections, people are
been exposed to or they also have a good connection they understand
more complex issues of the Internet and that opens a great business
opportunities for everyone.
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What I find over here is I have to sort of downgrade and because are not
used to the Internet they haven’t got an Internet live because of the price
and because of the connection speed the whole kids of things, I sell them
what I call a version 1 say website and the version of 1 website is things
that I was selling in the UK in 1999 it was the simplest form of website and I
am still deciding should we build the Internet. We don’t know if it is actually
going to work and the rest of world is 8 years ahead of that and saying you
know what if you are not on the Internet you are going to actually sort of die
as a company, you have to be on the Internet.
You got to provide the services, you can low your costs because now
nowadays you lower costs of call centres, people can access information
for themselves, and people can order pizzas do everything on line. it might
sound crazy to sort of doing all those kinds of things on line, but it is very
effective and it is safe and you know we still asking questions people were
asking eight, nine years ago basically.
My feeling then also is that Telkom owes this country between 5 and 8
years of service as I say in 1998 we were ahead of the rest of the world,
well ahead of the UK at least, put it that way not the US. In our
understanding and application for web tools all based around the Internet,
and now we are 8 years behind, my estimation is that we are 8 years
behind the USA and about 5 years behind the UK. So why? Now is it
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because we paying huge prices for our Internet connections, their not great
and so my feeling is how is Telkom going to make up for those lost 8 years
that they owe the public here that is what I what to see happening basically.
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I mean to be honest I do work for Telkom as well I have been, with my sort
of previous partner, we have done a lot of work for Telkom and we have
spoken to engineers and we have been told and I cannot clarify this I
cannot confirm this and I wont give names, but I have been told and you
can prove this, that they are running the actual sort of bandwidth system,
they sure holding the whole system for us, they could sort of release the full
system where we have far better speeds far better connections and all
kinds of things. Now you need to sort of confirm that that, but that is what I
have been told by engineers that they are holding back the service to us
and that is critical and I say you need to prove that.
I think Telkom needs to change something quite quickly to be honest
because many companies, when a company charges for Internet service in
this country or in every other country one of my clients …(Inaudible) my
services, I charge people for certain service overseas and they come
through and say how much do they cost and I say it cost so much. And over
here in South Africa we totally unique we don’t say it cost so much plus
your bandwidth costs.
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So you actually at the end you are not sure what you are going to be
paying. Everywhere else in the world you can say this is a fee to provide
with a video service or whatever service that actually is. In this country it is
the service and we charge you for bandwidth. Now to be honest bandwidth
is not expensive internationally I don’t understand why we are paying so
much for or why there are so many penalties to access foreign sites and all
kinds of things we don’t live in a, South Africa is not a little sort of Island we
live in a world we live in a global economy where we have got to connect
with the rest of the world.
What used to happen really is in the world bandwidth prices have dropped
dramatically. I have got friends of mine working in bandwidth in the world,
they all lost their jobs at one point and they could not get into, because
bandwidth cost quite a bit at first and then it became, there were so much
bandwidth out there so bandwidth became a commodity you could actually
sell bandwidth like a stock exchange. I want to buy so many telebytes, so
many gigabytes so many this so many that for so many weeks so many
days or many months and it was the case of sort of bargaining. So today is
going to cost you this much or that much and prices dropped dramatically.
Why we not followed sort of suit and the reason is because someone
controlling our economy.
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I believe the economy will be far freer here if South Africa was freed up if
we did not have Telkom holding us back telling us what is right for us telling
us that we should have a 3Gb cap all kinds of things. We are going to have
an economy where businesses run properly, every Internet application or
the software that we have nowadays links to the Internet and the
downloads updates. I mean there are massive updates, if you have 20 or
30-business software running in the machine you can download huge
amounts of things.
We should be able to be having video conferencing with the rest of the
world, we should be able to be providing services to the rest of the world
from South Africa, but we cannot, we have to actually go and host things in
London. I have got 2 surfers I have to have a surfer in London. If I want to
do big things with the rest of the world I host them in London.
Someone here, some businesses in South Africa is losing out on that
revenue that I could be providing because I cannot provide it here because
I need a set cost for my fee. I sell my ISP at a set cost and I cannot go back
to them and say listen you have now gone over you bandwidth usage by
three times and now you owe me more money. It does not work like that
around the world, we have got to follow suit we are part of the world.
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And my thing as well with Telkom, they had 8 years to learn from the USA,
the UK all over the whole world basically I am not just focusing those
countries but all over the whole world where they are where they are
running the ADSL services and Internet service, broadband services. Why
could they not look at the rest of the world and say lets learn from what they
have done lets learn from their mistakes because learning from the UK and
the US they made lots of mistakes, so lets learn from their mistakes lets
learn about the new model that is actually working new financial model, the
new billing models and the new everything lets apply that here, let us go
and buy their technology or let us put their technology in place here
because we know it works.
It is tested on way greater audiences, we can learn get if far cheaper
because it is already old technology, we are not buying at the peak of the
technology where it is very expensive. We buy old technology that work in
other countries for the last eight years. Telkom needs to look further and
say let us understand more about the mistakes the financial roles and the
models and let us apply them here.
We should be getting a top quality service and now Telkom don’t
…(Inaudible) obviously had to put some services in place to provide that
…(Inaudible), but they have not come to my business or my house and up
routed by wires, my cables to actually put new cables, the cables are still
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there, they are charging us huge amounts more for the same infrastructure.
They are reducing my business level where I can actually less, they are
reducing what I can bring in to this country because I refuse to have certain
things hosted here. Every single person, if you have got children, I want my
children to have access to information. I wouldn’t turn my kids down from
going to a library, but kids here have problem accessing international size
where they can watch videos because it goes over your bandwidth
basically.
And the Internet is the biggest library we have, there is knowledge out there
and there is good things and bad things, and if we can focus on the bad
things, but in everything in life there is good things and bad things. So we
might say we want to keep our kids from things, but to be honest what we
want to do is open up the door where they can actually download things
from around the world. Have access to the biggest library, have access to
whatever they need to have access to.
We need the freedom, as a businessperson we need to decide what is right
for our clients and not to be told by Telkom that we can only provide this
level of services to our clients. So I think something needs to be done
exceptionally quickly, it would seriously release the economy, I think it
would bring in lots of foreign investment because I know lots of South
Africans who are just in London alone providing services. People fly in back
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and forth over there. Where they are hosting their actual websites and there
are tools and services all in London because you cannot do it here. It costs
too much, so we need a new way, we need someone to fully understand
someone in charge who is passionate about it and says let us make a
change quickly because it is for the people, it is for every single person, we
have a right.
My set of feelings as I say is you have a right to certain things, food,
security, schooling, and broadband services become your most basic
requirement almost because it is the way we are going forward. We are
living in a web world, we are moving more and more into a web world and
we cannot deny that so we need someone to do it properly, that is it.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for your presentation, now we are
going to get into the question and answer session. They are just going to
ask questions of clarity or further information. The panel will take turns in
asking you, we will ask you both in oral submission and your written
submission as well. The very first question I would like to ask you on, I
know you said you are not giving dates, times and so on, I am not asking
for that, the issue of withholding bandwidth, by the suggestion that there is
a possibility that Telkom is withholding bandwidth. Now I would like to just
know from you, what would be the motivation factor and you are not the first
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person by the way who has raised that issue, but I like to know what do you
think could be the motivating factor?
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MR KAMINSKY: From our discussions we came to the conclusion that
Telkom, even in the year 2005, still has the aim of putting a telephone in
every single person’s house and they are focusing on how can we put more
telephone in houses and how can we actually charge for those telephone
calls. In that way I think that governs they way they sort of try and charge
for all kinds of things.
So to make sense basically I fell they just hadn’t thought about it properly,
their focus is not on providing a good Internet service, their focus is on
providing a telephone in every single house. I think their focus is wrong,
and potentially that is why they are holding back, it is because they are not
sure, they know that as soon as they release those bandwidth, we can all
use voice of an IP services, we can use what is called SKY, we can actually
access, you can actually talk on the Internet and that goes against their
principle of a telephone in every single house, that is our theory.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
MR KGAMEDI: On the other hand Telkom says it has different products for
people who are bandwidth hungry, how do you then react to that?
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MR KAMINSKY: Yes, I have got …(Inaudible) and I can buy more bandwidth
yes, and it is pretty easy to buy, or it is fairly easy. What I don’t like is if I
want to buy more bandwidth, all I have got to do is pay them obviously and
that is okay. But I mean you pay them, I think it is about R250 roughly
around there. What happens is they then give you a new user name and
password to log on to the Internet with.
Now me as a technical person, I can go on and I can change my modem
settings quite easily, the average user cannot. So that is the first thing, I
don’t like the way they do it. Secondly, I don’t see why there should be a
limit, in UK and to be honest I don’t know, maybe you know of any country
that do have any bandwidth restrictions.
There is one company in the UK that has a bandwidth restriction and it is
25Gb per day, so it is not even comparable basically, one of the companies
they have there is 25Gb per day bandwidth restriction in there, that is
incredible. So basically it is not only about the bandwidth hungry, every
person at some stage would find a reason to be bandwidth hungry, many
people are bandwidth hungry all the time and if Telkom wants to deal with
those people individually and say you must move into a business contract
or something like that, then they should handle those individually, but also
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the speed. We want bandwidth and we want speed basically, we want sort
of way higher speed, it relates to many things, Ja.
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MS BULBULIA: Thanks, Mlindi has covered my first question as well. In your
opinion, having experience in the UK and the US markets, do you consider
the current ADSL offering a broadband service; do you regard it as a fool
broadband service?
MR KAMINSKY: No, I regard it as a very low-level broadband service, it is
broadband in a sense that it is better that a modem, but I wouldn’t regard it
broadband, no.
MS BULBULIA: And I mean your big concern obviously is the cap, the speed
and the pricing?
MR KAMINSKY: That is it.
MS BULBULIA: And somewhere in your statement, I think you suggesting
that this is a huge cost recovery for Telkom, they kind of charging ADSL
users, the premium if you will to recover costs elsewhere, what do you say
about Telkom not increasing the rates since they introduces the service in
the market?
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MR KAMINSKY: I would say no, it needs to go with all technologies, you
come in at a peak and the service is a bad service. Then the service gets
much better and the price goes down, and that is just a set of life here
because when you build – if we had to look at your cellphones, you don’t
actually pay for the cellphone properly, we should be paying I mean if you
look at the real cost of the cellphone is R5 to 6 000 basically. You don’t pay
for the cellphone upfront, because you are paying for the – as you go on
the service pays for it. Cellphones are not new technology anymore, they
find ways of producing them cheaper, so we with any technology we have
introduced them to cover their initial cost because there is only a few
people, as it grows the case is there has to be a better service and it has to
reduce in price. If the price was internationally equal, competitive at least, I
would say yes hold on to it and go for it, but it is not.
MS BULBULIA: The final question, some suggestions yesterday from people
who made submissions is that keep the fixed monthly fee, but if you need to
get more bandwidth do it as per unit so that you don’t pay for the entire
paper work, so what do you think about suggestions like those?
MR KAMINSKY: I would say it is not good enough, based on the fact that, I
would like to know actually, are there more costs for Telkom if we go over
our bandwidth allowances. Because if I male sense in saying international
websites or websites here, I would really doubt it, maybe I am wrong in this,
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maybe I would doubt it that Telkom actually has to pay extra for our extra
usage, because some people may use the Internet and only download 2Mb
over the whole month. And others may download the full 3 or even over
that. I think there is very few power users out there, but I would say we
shouldn’t be paying for additional bandwidth at all.
I don’t see a reason behind it I don’t see why they should be charging us for
additional bandwidth, unless it is totally excessive. I understand if we are
broadcasting live video over the Internet, I understand if we are running a
major sort of a company network where there is huge amount of e-mails
going between offices and all those kinds of things, I understand all those
things. But I don’t understand on a general basis, when I go and download
a video, I don’t think that should affect my price.
CHAIRPERSON: Are you suggesting a flat rate as opposed to…(Interjection)?
MR KAMINSKY: Yes.
MR RUPLAL: You said that your connections would not hold up in your oral
submission, how do you mean, have you actually had disconnections for
your ADSL service and if so for how long and was it rectified and within a
reasonable amount of time?
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MR KAMINSKY: I am going to say two things here, the first thing is to say
things have Improved quite a lot, I must admit, the initial service I got was
way worse, I mean it is now faster now than it was but it is more reliable, so
that has improved in one level and then maybe that is an areas thing or
whatever.
But previously I would say that when I was downloading large files, I have a
client who puts on a 500Mb file on the website which I need to download,
now they uploaded the file as I say in probably ten or fifteen minutes. I start
downloading the file and every single time it gets to a certain point, it just
cuts out and it happened again and again eventually I got special software
to try and download chunks at a time and make it work. It almost, to me it
feels because I cannot prove this but feels as if once you get to a certain
point on a big download it just cuts you off, it says, now you are actually
abusing the network or something, it feels like that though that is all. I know
people who use the actual dialup services and there is many people I know
who actually guarantees, this is correct what they say, where if you are
downloading files over a 1Mb on a dialup service, as soon as you start
going on high it will get to a certain point and cut off at the same time each
time and restart your connection. I don’t know if there is something in there,
maybe there is not.
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MR THOOBE: How would you compare ADSL in comparison with some
other local broadband services?
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MR KAMINSKY: Okay, Sentech is hopeless, but their service has been very
very bad, I have tried everything it was and is, Sentech doesn’t work very
well, it is affected by wind and rain, so that is not an option. They also send
a …(Inaudible) they said they were going to rollout their connections
countrywide connections within the next set of year or two, or soon.
Unfortunately now when contacted them last time and I handed back my
modems, they told me I can only run out their full network by 2010, I said
you guys will be dead by then, there is no ways. So there, Sentech I
wouldn’t even touch, I think at a maximum Sentech had 1800 modem sold,
and everyone I know has returned the modem, so I don’t know how many
they got left. IBurst, they are doing a lot better, they are brand new, they
only officially launched at the beginning of this month. iBurst do work pretty
well. You have got to be in the right areas, their connections are very good,
I know the Directors of the company as well, the iBurst are doing very well
to be honest. The technology they are using they bought from Singapore,
plus the actually written their own sort of elements around that and I know
that there has been foreign companies coming into the country looking at
how successful the actual infrastructure actually is.
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Right now iBurst is a good option if you are in the right area, but it is not
everywhere unfortunately. ADSL obviously you can get it in most places
nowadays I think. It is at least when it is on it is on, it is reliable, I would say
ADSL unfortunately is possibly the best way to still to connect to Internet
now. In six-month time I think iBurst maybe, as long as you are within
central Johannesburg area or you are in a capital city, but ADSL is our
major way of connecting at the moment.
The other technology are all very new, I mean ADSL as I said is, I don’t
know old iBurst has been used in the world. I mean ADSL was used eight/
nine years ago in the US. The iBurst technology is only a couple of months
old, so they are going to have a couple of issues, they are sorting them out,
I know many of the issues actually that iBurst had, and this is from one of
the Directors, seem to be through Telkom sabotage. Once again they said
they have certain things, where the bandwidth was not turned on fully, I
don’t understand fully but there were two levels of connection they had and
they said to me basically, they couldn’t understand why all the time it was
not working properly because they are spending R2.5 million per tower that
they actually install in South Africa and they couldn’t understand why some
of the actual towers were not working properly and they couldn’t get the
actual full speed on the network.
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Eventually they came down to the fact the Telkom hadn’t actually turn
something on and we don’t know when we will do it.
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MS NGOASHENG: Thank you, you alluded to the fact that there are power
broadband users out there, in our written submission we have also received
complains about people who then still bandwidth from other people, how
can those people be protected from the power bandwidth user?
MR KAMINSKY: The first thing is to define whatever power bandwidth user, I
mean at the moment Telkom would consider you a power bandwidth user if
you were downloading probably a GB in one day, which in other countries
they would regard you as just probably a happy user as opposed to
bandwidth hungry user. I would imagine Telkom does have some kind of
service, I mean they could monitor each account, what they could do is if
ever there is a problem with bandwidth, which I don’t there is to be honest, I
think they could be giving us all the bandwidth we need. If there was a
problem, what they could go and do is just check on one person’s account.
I mean it doesn’t mean we need to define what is a power bandwidth user
because if you are downloading a video today, are you a power bandwidth
user, if you are playing gaming on the Internet, are you a power bandwidth
user? I don’t think so at that point where you find the abuse-taking place
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very often as you get companies who want service for others. And as long
as that line is point they are using the full capacity of that line.
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I would say Telkom use to have a – they need to watch accounts
individually. I am not saying that a bandwidth cap is bad, I don’t like it. I
mean I would rather not have a bandwidth cap, but if they want to put in a
reasonable cap and say let us give you 15Gb a day or let us give you 10, I
would battle to use ten, the users could use ten buy downloading all the
songs in the world in one day. But if you get 10 a day it means you could
actually just – so it would be nicely, it is hard to gage because you need to
define what is a power user, we need to discuss that I think.
MR MFUNDO: Sir, you seem to be echoing the sentiments which was
expressed by other presenters just before yourself, and I think that it seems
not be any proportionality between the costs that is paid by the subscribers
and the quality of services that they receive. Then what do you think should
be done about this 3G cap, should it be in your opinion removed or it be
increased?
MR KAMINSKY: My first gaol is to see it removed and if it is not removed I like
to see a reasonable cap of 10G a day or something. So first goal remove it
completely to in line with other countries and if cant because there is a real
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problem then I would say have a reasonable, but it cannot be, I mean a
month cannot be 3Gb it needs to be far bigger than that there.
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MR MFUNDO: The follow-up question would be what do you regard as a
reasonable cap?
MR KAMINSKY: If I was told that I had 3Gb a day I would still be pretty happy,
so I would say, I have been trying sort of come to that sort of that
conclusion as well, what is a reasonable cap if there is one? It is a difficult
one because it depends on what you use but I think if they have to put a
cap on it has to be low store I would say a minimum of 3 to 5Gb per day.
MR KGAMEDI: From your submission you indicated that contention ratio
would be a reasonable or a good idea but you are really not indicating what
level, which methods should it be broken into different pricing?
MR KAMINSKY: To be quite honest Telkom runs a business so they need to
be fair about it and obviously we all do expect contention ratios as long as it
does not harm everyone else. It is very hard for me as a, I am not
technically trained in the way where I fully understand that network and the
contention sort of structure. All I do know is we been told it is a, I think it is a
10 to 1 contention ratio is it on the network. What I have been told is what
they do is they owe a subscriber the ports, there is some sort of ports to go
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in there and owe the subscriber the ports so it is actually not a 10 to 1.
What I am saying is contention ratio are probably part of life, I think
probably every single country does that every single network does that but
there is a case of sort being honest about it, if you like ten people to use the
one line, then that is a 10 to 1 contention ratio. If you allow 10 people and
you over subscribe each port if you have more that one person using each
connection really then it is not fair because what you are actually paying for
is a 1 and 200 or whatever it maybe at that point.
So it is a different one for me to answer that one I would need to sort of,
what like to do in a way I would sort of based that on is lets us look at the
UK the US lets look at Europe lets look at any other successful country lets
look at a developing country that is doing very well with the Internet and lets
follow their model, lets learn.
CHAIRPERSON: Let me just deal with your written submission for a while
here. You say in your written submission that Telkom provides a very
inferior modem, could you please elaborate?
MR KAMINSKY: Yes, the Telkom modem when I was offered that modem it
came back to the original cost, I think that I maybe wrong because it was
almost 2 years ago it was about R3000 or R3 500, it was quite bit of a
money. I could buy for the same thing or I could go to any other shop even
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locally or in London the prices at that point in South Africa were still very
high for IT equipment. But I could get a modem, an ADSL modem that have
a fire wall on it so it protect my network it also had 4 ports on the back that
you could plug in for computers and it also had a wireless modem plug to it
as well, so I could actually just walk around the house with my computer or
whatever I wanted to do, for just over, okay this is the UK price now, just
over a R1000. So for R1000 I got something that had four things build into
one and the Telkom one was this really playing looking equipment they had
nothing on it.
When I use the Telkom equipment it was the actual software install in their
equipment was, because I could have used it as well and one of my
partners did have one, so I have used both sets of equipment and many
sets actually and I found that the Telkom software was lacking it was very
basic. We found that it was a restart the modem continually whereas
modem stay on for weeks and weeks until we have the or the lightening will
turn it off.
CHAIRPERSON: Okay, second question in your written submission you say
that you compare our jurisdiction, the Telkom ADSL with the other
jurisdiction that is the UK and the US, you said that in your oral submission,
but you then go on and say that there were certain problems and mistakes
that were made in this countries. What are those mistakes are they not
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exactly what like we perceived as Telkom shortcoming with ADSL isn’t it the
growth process?
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MR KAMINSKY: Yes, that is a growth process, I mean look here it all goes
down to growth, I mean mistakes were made over there because they over
valued the actual market originally, they based all their cost more often in
the UK or what they could charge services based on what they thought
would be buying because even at that point in the UK I thought you do all
your purchasing on the Internet they did not realise that you still would want
to go and touch a T-shirt and feel something sometimes. So they were
saying everyone is going to buy on Internet and forever user is worth so
much money and therefore if you buy Internet services or either buying a
modem or whatever it is going to change your life dramatically and
therefore we could charge a lot.
Now very quickly in the UK what they do is the public has a very good
watch dog in the UK and they get out and they shout very loudly and the
press gets involved behind the public and anything when there is a any
problem in the UK they sort of make it publicly or it becomes public domain
very quickly. I don’t think BT would ever be concerned about something like
Telkom or one of those website ever.
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Yes, it is growth process just to sum-up there but why can’t we learn from
their growth, they made mistakes of rolling around to slowly, they made a
mistake of doing certain things a bit to slowly of controlling things a bit to
much at first, I never saw a cap but there was no cap but my feelings is yes,
we all make mistakes but what is the point of making the same mistake of
someone else? Let us learn from them and lets actually put them in place.
CHAIRPERSON: So the issue of over pricing, so-called over pricing in South
African context because obviously we are still going to come up with the
decision, but the issue of so-called over pricing is an international
phenomenon from what you …(Interjection)
MR KAMINSKY: Initially, yes.
CHAIRPERSON: It has been the issue and the obviously, and what do you
attribute the dropping prices is it market forces such as competition or is it
pressure from the consumer lobby?
MR KAMINSKY: It is actually both it is certainly competition. Competition
opens that up, I mean it is funny competition will actually drop the prices in
half immediately when everyone is still unhappy. So certainly it is
competition and it is also sort of pressure as well, obviously you need to
have a certain infrastructure in place and you obviously want to pay that off
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as well. But because Telkom is not a – well I suppose not a sort of a profit
company there are service provider as such, they have to provide they
have to make a phone work and they get for us to sort of call each other, do
business, download, make money around with what they provide. The
infrastructure, I don’t think they should be charging the highest price there
actually is and then also once again back to the whole thing of we are
charging those high prices 8 years after other countries have actually sort
of – I mean if I had to buy ADSL technology from other countries
inexperienced they are not paying the original prices that they pay for in
those countries, they are buying the technology at a reduced rate from
other countries when they put them in place. That was my sort of feeling.
So South Africa bought the ADSL services probably from other countries
other systems or whatever, they must have bought them far cheaper than
the UK and the USA. So we should have our discount on that initially
anyway not an increase.
CHAIPERSON: Just another question you spoke about local content
development at a very great length, but the prices are prohibited so
obviously that somewhat prevents local content development and web
hosting and how people prefer to host their site overseas as opposed to
locally. But is this really directly attributable to the ADSL service or is it
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attributable to public information and use information about usage of
broadband and Internet in general?
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MR KAMINSKY: It is not specifically ADSL as you say here, it is more
broadband but then came back again ADSL cost you so much supposedly
because broadband is so expensive or I mean bandwidth is so expensive
so they are fairly balanced, yes.
MS MACINGWANE: Telkom in their submission said that the cap was
introduced to keep the price of ADSL affordable. Now you would like to see
the cap removed, do you think there is any relationship between the cap
and the price of the service and how do you think prices would be affected
if the cap was removed?
MR KAMINSKY: Firstly, I would like to see them workout what it actually does
cost me to access an international site for say 24 hours, I would like to see
sort of that done. I would say Telkom are making out that bandwidth is
precious, bandwidth is as precious commodity that we have got and we
have to almost conserve and reserve it basically, what I am saying is in the
converse is that globally prices have dropped through the floor basically for
bandwidth. Prices turn to access sort of international sites and all kinds of
things out there it is almost free and so cheap to be honest you have to sort
of try and force people to actually buy your bandwidth because there are so
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many bandwidth providers. I know there is 2 or 5 applicable now coming
down the 2 sides of Africa the continent. We should be accessing the rest
of the world for incredibly cheap.
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So if the cap was removed, I don’t think the cap I don’t think it is actually a
lie to be honest to say that the cap is there to bring prices down, I think the
cap is there to make money and to restrict us because if the cap is released
then Telkom does not get a phone in every house.
MS NGOASHENG: In your submission you touched briefly on the issue of port
prioritisation, can you just elaborate on how port prioritisation affects the
ADSL service?
MR KAMINSKY: There is so much speciality at all but I would say , the
question was basically should you give some subscribers access over other
subscriber? And certainly, yes if you are paying for an incredible service. If
you for instance I decided to go and form an event, an armature event and I
decide to broadcast this even to the world, so I get my cameras out I go
and film the whole thing and I need guaranteed bandwidth, I cannot have
any sort of blebs in my actual sort of delivery then I can go and say to
Telkom I need special package for this weekend and if they supply me with
that where I have priority over others, then I would say in that sense it
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becomes a business need and I am profiting out that and so therefore I
would not mind paying for that.
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But I would not say generally they should be I mean if I was using a
connection with 10 other I would not like to know that one other person has
got priority over me because of some weird reason. I mean I cant think of
about the reason would be what would the valid reason be why they would
actually have priority over me. So I would say if you pay for it you get it and
if you don’t you just share.
CHAIPERSON: When it comes to the issue of system abuse, the question
that, the issue we put forth that Telkom says, obviously they cap because
there are abusers of bandwidth, bandwidth huggers, etc. You said that
Telkom should monitor and deal with people who abuse the system. Now
when you say “deal” could you please unpack that what do you mean when
you say deal with people?
MR KAMINSKY: Deal is a recommendation to say or there is two ways, I
would say need a warning you are abusing what we consider reasonable
because that is how some of the words, somebody actually provide in
different country say, you can use our services within reason. Now who can
you define reasonable? So if they feel now that someone is using the actual
service unreasonably, I would say you approach them you have got to have
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an automatic service that send them an e-mail saying your bandwidth
usage is what we consider reasonable, if it happens next month or
tomorrow or next year or whatever it may be then we going to have to
introduce you to a new package. These are packages available please
respond.
And then if you don’t get the response the next month if they go over
because sometimes one month where you pick and you have been using
the service for 2 years and you haven’t actually gone anywhere near pick,
but one month I have a reason why I have a reason why I want to use the
service, I hit the pick I became an unreasonable user for that one month
and then I get a warning saying next month this is what we consider
reasonable. If you want more then pay for more, so I would say it would be
a case of just recommendation first of all and then this will follow-up the
next month saying, okay, it is two months in a row please move to the new
service.
CHAIRPERSON: You use a very interesting word reason, now I don’t want you
to define reason obviously if depends on particular environment and the
particular operator but could you give us an example of which operator
which is actually put that stipulation, can you think of one at this moment?
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MR KAMINSKY: I am thinking of one I have seen, I think is Telewest provide
services in the UK, I cannot think of …(Interjection)
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CHAIRPERSON: I think it should be fine it is actually enough. Then you deal
with the service level agreement, we asked the question about service level
agreement and you in capital letter with a lot of explanation mouth to say
“OH YES”, but you don’t specify what you think appropriate term
…(Interjection)
MR KAMINSKY: No, you the problem is I actually got hold of all kinds of
providers and I said give me you service provider agreement I want to see it
and it is very hard to find a service level agreement. I mean I tried few years
and say Sentech I shout with them give me your service level agreement I
want them because I paying for something I am not getting, with Telkom, I
haven’t been through their SLA and …(Interjection)
CHAIRERSON: What is an ideal SLA for you in an ideal world?
MR KAMINSKY: An ideal world, my holding companies in the UK, they
guarantee I have a 99,9% uptime, they guarantee it, that is incredible.
CHAIRPERSON: Anytime of day?
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MR KAMINSKY: Anytime of day I have 99,9% that allow to sort of have you
rented a service or your website service, whatever it may be, only down for
a few minutes or most. Because every computer will need restarting we will
understand that computers do crash, unfortunately and they do crash. But
there are needs to be something in the reason of a 99,9% service level
agreement of this is your uptime and what is the penalty.
The penalties in the UK for ADSL going down they sort of, one of client is
over there I think if he could claim back 50 Pounds a day for loss of
business and things like that there and if you wanted to claim more he
could go and do it. This is a few years back now, so this is in 1999 you
could claim 50 Pounds a day, I maybe wrong of a day exactly but it might
have been a bit more if they actually produced the service or there was a
problem and so one time he was down for a week and he charged them
and they paid him.
CHAIRPERSON: You have to proof it obviously then, it is not automatically?
MR KAMINSKY: It not automatic, what they need to do is, if you call them,
they call down the technicians they say they cannot fix for few more days
and therefore he claimed.
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CHAIRPERSON: I would be possible for us to at least get one of those service
level agreements?
MR KAMINSKY: I could actually speak to him, yes.
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CHAIRPERSON: Send it to the same lady you send your submission to. My
very last question, you comment about the two-year contract, is that the
only period of duration that you are entitled to or are there different duration
that you entitled to for Telkom ADSL contract?
MR KAMINSKY: So far I have been sort of exposed to the two-
year…(Interjection)
CHAIPERSON: That is in terms of the free modem?
MR KAMINSKY: In terms of the free modem yes, I have taken that because I
did not need it and I have at one point cancelled my Telkom contract, went
somewhere else and then when I moved again I went back to Telkom just
because it was convenient. My concern with technology when something
changes, things change so quickly and if am stuck in a 2 years contract it
makes me nervous quite to be honest, every house basically, this is signed
contract or 3 months notice when I cancelled my subscription in the UK, I
had to give a 3 months notice period for that, which is reasonable.
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In South Africa we are used to a two-years contract I mean when we take
out cellphone it is a two-years contract, you get a new phone every two-
years. In the UK you get a new phone every year and your contract is sort
of based on a one-year contract. I would say I am not happy about a two-
years because things change so fast, they sort of …(Inaudible) been
Telkom knows that other are coming into the market in a big way and this
may be correct or wrong you could say the Telkom sees that there are
going to be the competitors, they want to lock you into a contract right now
because you so cannot go to the competitors because people are moving
along quite quickly. I speak to people and tell them you know I am using
iBurst and they like fantastic I am going to cancel and go with them, they do
a check to see if the area is okay and they go wit them. People should have
the ability to change because that is your freedom it should guarantee you
a good service if this person isn’t performing, you know what I will move
there.
CHAIRPERSON: Any further questions panel, from the public are there
questions points of clarification? I thought I saw a the gentleman behind
you I thought he had something to add with regard to the cap, what should
it be amended to, you were suggesting something.
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MR CZYPIONKA: My name is Czypionka I am an economic consultant. I
believe they should not be a cap, the reason being what the gentleman said
bandwidths are quite extraordinarily cheap and it will not be used by the by
the bulk of users in the first place, but if you have to from time to time
downloads specific updates your software or whatever it is you should not
be trapped. Inter alia or so, responsible for a board of school and we cannot
utilise Internet base education services in an appropriate manner simply
because there are cap limitation imposed on educational institutions and I
believe that holds back an extraordinary important part of our economy
from being cutting edge or being tat the edge of the world. But the point
really remains that bandwidths is a commodity and the caps which are
presently imposed on the Internet service because it is not an ADSL cap it
is part of the Internet service which is imposed on top and it is not only
Telkom which is doing something like that, they are pity the counter
productive and economically retarding, because this are kind of thing were
you just update your Micro software you wiped our your cap for the month.
And you look at the service costs for instance purely the Internet service
provided by Telkom because I am user of Telkom is R250 for ADSL
Internet service which comes on top of the ADSL connections. So you
literally on before you even start on the slow ADSL, which Telkom calls the
fast ADSL you are on R850 to start of with and you have a cap on top of it.
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That maybe being petty, but the point remains that if you proposal, if there
is a daily cap and it is as generous as 10G it does not become an issue.
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I don’t know why we should prevent people in South Africa from being at
the leading edge if the need to be, they want to be, they have to be in
streaming for instance in downloading of films, music, documentation as its
common practicing in the rest of the world.
CHAIPERSON: Thank you very much for that statement you just made.
Thank you very much for your presentation Mr Kaminsky, we really
appreciate it. I think you are our last presenter for the day we will
recommence tomorrow at 9H00, same venue and the presenters that will
make submission will be as according to the public schedule.
We like to believe there is a possibility that they might be another speaker
that will still come this afternoon will just give the lady a few minutes just to
check.
MR CZYPIONKA: May I ask for point of clarification, is ICASA entitled to
enforce prices or prescriptions or regulations or can only make
recommendations to the Minister and if the latter, what is the point?
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CHAIRPERSON: Let me just explain the nature of this process, we are going
to have the public process, we are going to an outcomes document and
from that document we will say what steps we intend to on taking because
this is just an enquiry. Then we are entitled to take steps should we feel the
need. If we want to make a regulation we go through a regulation making
process, which is enforceable.
So this is just a preliminary that will then help scope the way going forward.
Now obviously once we have made the regulations we recommend them to
the minister and they become law should she accept. But that is in the
ordinary course of regulation making. Is just that it seems like a lengthier
process but at least this is a thorough process because it then forms a
bases forward whatever step that we take there after because we need to
find out what the true information is and then obviously come up with the
strategy on how we take the matter forward.
MR CZYPIONKA: Second point of clarification, why is this enquiry confined to
ADSL, because ADSL is only an alternative to other technologies and the
future or recommendation, which arise for ADSL depend to some extend on
alternative or availability or non-availability of alternatives like for instance
optical fibber based solutions, which are in for the superiors and which are
available in many countries at an extraordinary low prices where there is no
capacity limit and to the best of knowledge did you have fibber optical
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networks quite extensively installed in South Africa the use of which is
somehow restricted yet the enquiry does not extend into that because you
can only come to conclusion if you have alternatives for instance on the one
end in terms of the fibber optic network, in terms of technology and pricing,
Diginet lines or whatever it is, but if Diginet lines and fibber optic pricing is
enormously expensive it forces users onto ADSL…(Interjection)
CHAIRPERSON: But let me just assist you there, the reason the trigger for this
whole process is we received complains with regard to this specific service
hence the necessity for us to undertake the enquiry, so that is basically to
rationale as to why ADSL is the one that is being subjected to enquiry.
MR CZYPIONKA: I understand that but if you have a problem with one service
and you can escape into another service then that avenue is pertinent for
the examination of the ADSL service, I for instance for pricing reason use
Acen service but I am not going into ADSL because it had deficiencies on
pricing and speed and so on, but ideally you would like to have as many
options as possible which is not present. So I think the enquiry should
concern itself why ADSL, which is in fact probably a second rate solution?
CHAIRPERSON: I really think that that is a broader question that you are
putting forth but this is not a broadband enquiry, a broadband high speed
Internet access enquiry that is not the bases for this enquiry. We are
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dealing with the issue that had been put before us to specifically address,
which is the ADSL service at this point in time. If you are saying they are
other options out there that you are completely satisfied with then obviously
you are entitled to write to ICASA and there is a critical mass we believe
that it does warrant an enquiry then we will undertake such enquiry as and
when the need arises. I think councillor Nadia will also like to add.
MS BULBULIA: This is in the framework of the consumer protection,
consumer affairs, and we have heard on the first day the announcement
that we had more than 446 submissions made in this regard. Naturally out
of the findings document and in our determining the way forward in any
other matters that might have come through to this enquiry, you for
example today made some submission we will inform the final out come of
how we think we need to move forward on this.
But I think that we welcome all suggestions and points people will like to
make this is a very open process but as Councillor Mohlala said was trigger
specifically the quite the range of complains they have received on
specifically ADSL.
CHAIRPERSON: So you are entitled if you are not happy about other services,
you are more than welcome to write to us.
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MR CZYOINKA: You do not from your side initiate things?
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CHAIRPERSON: No, we do it depends on the context, I am just responding to
what you have put before us. And luckily we have our Consumer Protection
Senior Manager, Mrs Ngoasheng if you do have any complains you are
entitled to afford them to her. Thank you very much for your time will
reconvene at 9:00 tomorrow.
(THE END)
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