chairperson · icasa adsl enquiry (volume ii) 14 april 2005 ----- ----- icasa presentation hall 1 5...

ICASA ADSL Enquiry (Volume II) 14 April 2005

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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ICASA Presentation Hall

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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.

Block C Happy Recordings and Transcriptions P O Box 1785, Sundowner, 2161 - Tel: (011) 795 3396


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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)


chairperson · icasa adsl enquiry (volume ii) 14 april 2005 ----- ----- icasa presentation hall 1 5...

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