Telkom has slammed a study by the Communications Users Association of SA (CUASA), details of which were released earlier this week.
CUASA said its study found that that the average business has been paying around 14% more to Telkom every month than it would have for the same services last year. Telkom introduced a new tariff regime in January.
Telkom says the study has several problems.
"The CUASA study is seriously flawed in that it uses call data from one business customer only," says Pinky Moholi, Telkom chief sales and marketing officer, in a statement. "This is hardly a statistically representative sample, and by focusing on call charges only, it ignores the effect on revenue of the adjustment on Telkom`s total basket of regulated services."
Moholi says installation, rental and data services are some other elements that should be considered. "In our experience, medium-sized businesses make extensive use of data services, and those costs need to be factored in along with call costs to ascertain the real impact of Telkom`s tariff adjustments."
CUASA says the average call duration at the business it surveyed was two-and-a-half minutes, but Telkom says this is not representative of its user base.
"Based on an analysis of call volumes across our customer base, it is a fact that nearly half of all calls made by our customers last less than one minute. This is not something we`ve cooked up to mislead the public," says Moholi.
The company also questions the inclusion of cellphone charges in the study, saying Telkom acts as a collection agency for cellular operators and does not set the retail rates for such calls. Calls to cellular numbers made up 65% of the total charges recorded in the study.
Telkom has constantly maintained that the new tariff structure has seen an increase of only 5.5% of its revenues. Last year it predicted that the average impact on business accounts would be a 5.4% increase, with large corporations paying 2.2% more and residential customers 7.2% more per month.
It has now challenged CUASA to allow it the opportunity to review its data.
"We are giving CUASA an open invitation to reveal the name of the customer surveyed, so that Telkom is able to verify their statistics," says Moholi. CUASA identified the account used only as that of a medium-sized business.
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