Kelly Dube's landline was cut off when he couldn't pay the huge bills, forcing the Sowetan driving instructor to use an expensive cell phone instead. In Cape Town, executive Nasrin Consul came within a whisker of ditching her fixed line after getting a 25,000 rand ($4,415) bill that wasn't hers. Rich or poor, black or white, most South Africans have an axe to grind with state-controlled fixed-line monopoly Telkom, slammed for ripping-off customers, inflating business costs and hampering the roll-out of phone and Internet access.
The big question is whether imminent liberalisation, due in February, will force down Telkom's prices and shrink South Africa's gaping communications divide, seen as a major barrier to development and equality 10 years after the end of apartheid.
"Affordability is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for widespread fixed line phone and Internet use in South Africa," said Tracey Cohen, a councillor at communications regulator ICASA, noting that one of its mandates was to work for universal telecoms access.
Just one in 10 South Africans - mostly rich whites - currently have a landline and more than 1 million people disconnected their phone last year, many because of the cost.
Internet access is worse, with only 0.07 percent of South Africans linked to an ADSL high-speed connection, according to consumer website Hellkom, and only one in 10 on line at all.
The lack of communications outside the rich suburbs is partly due to poor infrastructure, but must also be blamed on prices, which are too high for a country where more than half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, experts say.
Telkom will charge 40 cents a minute for a local peak-time call from January, compared to free local calls in North America. A slimmed-down residential ADSL package costs 449 rand ($79.28) a month, more than three times as much as some offers in Europe.
Africa's biggest telecoms company says it charges less than mobile firms, its main competition, and must keep lifting prices for calls and Internet access to ensure growth.
Received wisdom says deregulation will herald low-cost telecoms by allowing firms to offer cheap calls over the web, thus loosening Telkom's monopoly, cutting business costs and making phones and Internet more affordable.
But some experts fear competition may only effect long distance calls - a boon for businesses - while local call costs remain stubbornly high. Telkom recently slashed international calls by a third but raised line rental and installation fees by almost 7 percent to compensate.
"Competition is essential and we will see real benefits for businesses in South Africa," said Ray Webber, spokesman for the Communications Users Association of South Africa. "But there is a big question over how it will help poor people with no phone."
Telkom is contesting plans by the regulator to protect consumers >from page 12 by capping prices until competition takes off and says it needs to increase charges in order to protect revenues from the threat of competition.
"If you strip out the impact of tariff increases then revenues are flat," head of marketing services Naas Fourie told Reuters. "Higher prices are the only way we can achieve growth."
Many experts say the company is fighting a losing battle and should instead be seeking innovative ways to penetrate the mostly untapped market of poor blacks, by cutting prices, offering imaginative deals and rolling out more phone lines.
"If you look at the townships, there is high density, low labour costs and a massive market," said Ewan Sutherland, head of the International Telecommunications Users Group. "You could wire them up at a fairly low cost, do some really innovative stuff with pre-paid systems, and start bundling voice with cheaper Internet services and cable TV."
Many people living in the sprawling townships currently opt to receive calls on a cell phone, and either use pay-as-you-go cards to regulate their outgoing calls, or go to public phones set up in roadside shacks by mobile firms.
Several Sowetan residents surveyed by Reuters said landlines were old hat and they were happy with their mobile phones. The big problem with having no line was that the Internet remained a distant dream.
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has said she expects South Africa's communications sector to be "world class" within 10 years.
Africa's biggest media company Naspers says the country has a long way to go before that becomes a reality, and blames Telkom for hampering Internet innovation.
"South Africa is a complete desert of miserable stagnation - Telkom's monopoly constantly stifles any innovation," said chief executive Koos Bekker. "It is becoming a backwater as far as the Internet is concerned."
Telkom says it is providing cheap Internet access to schools, but experts say it needs to build promoting the Internet into its business model - not just for the greater good, but to boost its own coffers.
"For the Internet to really take off and also be profitable it has got to happen on a mass scale - it's got to be the VW drivers not just the Mercedes Benzes on line," said Sutherland.
"This means producing a decent affordable offer, instead of hoping the problem goes away. I saw one operator in France that was offering a month of broadband at 15 euros - it would be a cold day in hell if Telkom did that."
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