Telkom: Has judgment day arrived for Telkom?

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 7 November 2011

After years of delay the Competition Commission stands a good chance to finally ensure that Telkom is punished for anti-competitive behavior, especially over the 2003 period. If successful, Telkom could be fined in excess of R3bn or 10% of its 2003 annual revenues.

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In what can be seen as a breakthrough for the Average Joes in South Africa, the Competition Commission has started to hear arguments in one of the cases against Telkom last month. This is after Telkom has failed in their bid to question the jurisdiction of the Competition Commission at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. This in itself was a victory for us Average Joes, because we are the ones that suffered the most under Telkom’s reign of terror. They are now trying to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of former foreign shareholders such as SBC (now AT&T) and Telekom Malaysia, which bought a 30% stake in Telkom via Thintana Communications way back in the late 90’s, but conveniently forget that the SA Government had a considerable stake in Telkom at the time. In fact, the SA Government had a 67% stake in Telkom at the time after they previously sold 30% of their Telkom shares to Thintana Communications and another 3% to Ucingo Investments (Proprietary) Limited. The SA Government had enough power to stop the abuse, but had chosen to sit and watch while us Average Joes got raped by “tariff rebalancing” and other Telkom stunts, not to mention the various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that have failed as a direct result of Telkom’s anti-competitive behavior. In fact, the late and former Communications Minister, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (alias Poison Ivy), did her outmost best to protect Telkom’s stranglehold on the SA telecoms market at the time. She only stopped when Altech went to court in 2008 “…to force the review of ICASA’s licensing process and won…” (Altech remains our hero, ADSL South Africa, 11 January 2009).

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Telkom’s shenanigans at the time have contributed to a large extent to the telecoms playing field being unleveled in terms of competition, while enriching themselves at a cost to the Average Joes. In addition, Telkom has not come clean since then, but has done their outmost best to hamper the Competition Commission. Current Telkom shareholders only have themselves to blame. It is most definitely not the first time that word is out about Telkom’s anti-competitive behavior and attempts to ensure some form of justice. It is a risk current Telkom shareholders had to factor in before buying or acquiring Telkom shares. ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa) truly hopes that Telkom gets the punishment it deserves.