South Africa may be getting a new undersea cable – in the form of Seacom, which has promised to slash the price of international connectivity – but for consumers, Telkom continues to ramp up its line rental and local call costs. As part of Telkom’s submission to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) in June, the company applied for what it claimed was a 1.7 percent increase in its basket of services. However, closer scrutiny reveals increases for local voice calls were actually 10.7 percent and five percent for analogue line rentals.

Increase and lose