Telkom increase is 14%, says CUASA

Johannesburg, 09 Apr 2002

The Communications Users Association of SA (CUASA) believes the average business user has been paying around 14% more on its monthly telephone bill since January, when Telkom introduced a new tariff structure.

The new rate structure, which saw a reduction in the number of distance bands and increases on some services of more than 50%, is being challenged in court by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA). The next hearing in the matter has been postponed until the end of May.

CUASA says it studied the impact of the increases on an unidentified medium-sized business over one month, and compared the actual cost to what it would have been under the 2001 charges.

Although the average increase is 14.4%, the increases on different services varied wildly. The price of calls to cellular phones, which made up the bulk of the company`s bill, rose by 13.1%. Local calls increased by 22.8%. The cost of international calls decreased by more than 50%, but the impact on the total bill was negligible as international calls made up only 0.3% of the total monthly bill.

CUASA also found that the average call duration for the business examined was just more than two-and-a-half minutes. "This is in stark contrast with Telkom`s misleading statement that almost half of the calls made by their customers last less than one minute," the body says.

The association says it intends to bring its results to the attention of ICASA and the Advertising Standards Authority, where Telkom was accused of misleading advertising by claiming the average impact on users to be a 5.5% increase.

"CUASA believes that this 14.4% increase is likely to be fairly representative of what most of Telkom`s customers are experiencing, and we therefore request that ICASA proceeds with haste to determine and confirm the overall results of Telkom`s call charge changes," it says.

Telkom has undertaken to refund its users should the courts rule against it.

Surveys are underway to determine the impact of the changes on consumers but no data is yet available.

CUASA is an umbrella body for an association of data and voice users.