{"id":2333,"date":"2012-02-17T14:10:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T12:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/?p=2333"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:14:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:14:59","slug":"telkom-tribunal-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/general\/telkom-tribunal-hearings\/","title":{"rendered":"Webafrica CEO on the Telkom Competition Tribunal hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>Telkom is <\/strong>still guilty of anti-competitive behaviour and should be made to pay.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Webafrica CEO, <strong>Tim Wyatt-Gunning<\/strong>, comments on the <strong>Telkom Competition Tribunal<\/strong> hearings<\/em>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As former joint <strong>CEO<\/strong> <strong>of<\/strong> <strong>Storm<\/strong>, I was part of the <strong>VANS group<\/strong> which initially took the complaint to the C<strong>ompetition Commission<\/strong>, so I had good insight into the anti-competitive practices which <strong>Telkom <\/strong>used. Almost a decade later, in my new capacity as <strong>CEO of Web Africa<\/strong>, I can categorically say that they are still up to their old tricks, albeit in a less damaging manner.<\/p>\n<p>It is eight years since the <strong>VANS companies <\/strong>lodged a claim against <strong>Telkom<\/strong>. At the time, their routine failure to assist <strong>VANS <\/strong>providers and to compete unfairly on pricing had a material impact on all of our businesses, often with the result that our customers were forced either to remain with <strong>Telkom <\/strong>or revert back to <strong>Telkom<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Telkom <\/strong>has argued that the behaviour of which it stands accused no longer occurs and that the case is less relevant on account of the amount of time that has elapsed since the complaint was first brought.<\/p>\n<p>I must point out that this is not accurate. We have lodged several objections recently to our <strong>Telkom <\/strong>Account Managers regarding <strong>Telkom <\/strong>sales agents approaching customers who are moving over to us from other ISPs with \u2018special offers\u2019.\u00a0 While there is clearly a lot more separation between wholesale and retail than there was in 2003, we still believe <strong>Telkom Retail<\/strong> is not treated at a full arm\u2019s length alongside other wholesale customers.<\/p>\n<p>Looking forward, I want to see the penalty match the crime and not to be lightened because \u2018things have moved on\u2019. <strong>Uncompetitive practices<\/strong> over the years have had a knock on effect today.\u00a0 In the absence of a punchy regulator, <strong>Telkom <\/strong>has dragged its feet allowing industry players to find themselves in the ludicrous position where, today, <strong>Telkom <\/strong>represents around 80% of our network cost base.<\/p>\n<p>A skewed, anti-competitive landscape continues to <strong>prejudice <\/strong>the retail price of broadband. This is not in the best interest of the consumer and certainly not in the<strong> best interest<\/strong> of an economy where business input costs, like telecommunications, remain <strong>unreasonably high <\/strong>and continue to see this country remain <strong>uncompetitive<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Telkom is still guilty of anti-competitive behaviour and should be made to pay. Webafrica CEO, Tim Wyatt-Gunning, comments on the Telkom Competition Tribunal hearings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":2539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/blogimage_tim.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdAWxt-BD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14137,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions\/14137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}