How SBC (AT&T) Pillaged South Africa's Economy

Kifoth writes "For 8 years, SBC and Telekom Malaysia controlled South Africa's only telecommunications company, Telkom. Telkom had a government granted monopoly in order for it to connect the large parts of South Africa that had been neglected under apartheid. Instead of helping, SBC abused their position and raised Telkom's prices to be among the highest in the world. The billions they made here ultimately went to fund their AT&T merger. From the article: 'SBC, described as "congenitally litigious", is said to have played a major role in the failure of South Africa's telecoms policy to develop a competitive telephone service. Under SBC's control Telkom not only failed to meet its roll-out obligations but behaved "as a tax on industry and a drag on economic growth."'"

Comments

Telmex in Mexico,..

[Kyusaku Natsume]

is the same thing. That's how Carlos Slim, the company's owner, became richer than Bill Gates. The guy owns the 8% of mexican economy; we pay montly US$50 for a crappy 2Mb-download/128k upload "broadband" connection. The bastard owns the president, the Congress and the worthless mexican Supreme Court.

But America sould not worry. George W. Bush is the first mexican president of USA, so I'm sure that USA will become like Mexico in 20 years if the neocons get their way.

What's new?

[Plocmstart]

This is the same company that couldn't transfer my phone number across the street from one apartment to another. When it was time for them to switch my service they managed to cut off my old number, forward it to the wrong new number, and not even connect my new number at my new apartment. I guess to their credit I later found out that they couldn't connect my new number because the previous tennants had never disconnected their old number, but those same people had also not paid their bill for nearly 6 months according to the rep I had talked to (which it was probably illegal to disclose to me, but whatever). 2 weeks later when 6 months had elapsed they did then finally disconnect their number and hook mine up.