The fight between the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) and Telkom is gaining momentum, but there's such dust being thrown up it's hard to know who to believe.
In one corner there is the lobby group MyADSL, which, if you have a look at its online forums, can be a bit too vitriolic to be entirely believable as an objective body. Nonetheless, we need our consumer activists because, inbetween the bias, there often lies a grain or two of truth.
Then there's Icasa. This typically stern but measured body has been hitting out harder than ever lately and its latest report is particularly strong; at times it borders on barely disguised bouts of irritation.
At face value it seems a bit extreme, but if you look deeper there's a strategy here. Telkom has long been secretive about its business. It seems that Icasa has become so annoyed with trying to regulate in an information vacuum that it has had to come to its own harsh conclusions, giving Telkom a simple choice: lump it or offer up more information.
Icasa is playing tough, but has kept all the transcripts on the hearings into Telkom's high-speed internet services.
Telkom is also trying to play tough but its bluffing is rather disingenuous. It has said it would have to consider cancelling its high-speed internet roll-out if Icasa got its way on pricing. Yeah right.
The fixed-line monopoly, facing competition from a second network operator, all three mobile providers and Sentech, can't afford to miss out. This segment may only make up a small amount of Telkom's revenues now, but it is being sold as the market of the future.
If Icasa follows through and starts to regulate for lower charges Telkom will no doubt take legal action. This will keep Telkom's charges higher for longer but may not stave off the inevitable - that the service must become cheaper.
Telkom has a very successful business to protect and has been dropping prices slowly. If it hadn't upset consumers so much in the past, it might encounter more sympathy now. It's another lesson in bad corporate karma: rotten service levels are always going to come back to bite you. RB
SAA
By appealing the competition tribunal's decision in the case relating to abuse of dominance by the national airline, chief executive Khaya Ngqula will be making this his case.
Up to now Ngqula could quite correctly have explained that this unfortunate matter was the result of errors of judgment by previous managements. This might have afforded him some negotiating room, if not with the competition authorities, then perhaps with competitors Nationwide and Comair.
However, by choosing to appeal the tribunal's decision, Ngqula appears to be tying his colours to a mast that was erected by Andre Viljoen. This mast has been described by the tribunal as being "in the twilight zone of legality".
Indications are that SAA is appealing the decision on almost every point made by the tribunal. Of course, when you appeal on almost every point it generally suggests that you don't have any strong individual points on which to make the case.
But if this is so then the parties can ready themselves for yet another long, tedious battle. Included in this battle will no doubt be yet another protracted dispute about whether or not SAA has a dominant share of the domestic air travel market.
Anyone who witnessed the frantic scenes in the country's strike-hit airports last week might feel a little puzzled as to why teams of executives and lawyers would need to spend so much time on this particular issue. AC
Highveld Steel & Vanadium
Interim financial results posted this week by this steel maker in the Anglo American stable bore all the hallmarks of a top-of-the-cycle performance.
Revenue for the six months to June rose almost 60 percent to more than R4 billion, while headline earnings a share almost trebled to R10.50, which equalled the interim dividend.
(Combined with a special dividend of R6.50, Anglo is laughing its way to the bank.)
But the cycle has started to turn. Highveld says international steel price cuts and softening demand is being felt across the full range of steel products, while vanadium markets are slowing in line with weaker steel demand.
So it's curious that some investors this week were prepared to fork out more than R70 a Highveld share, even though Highveld acknowledged it would be impossible to maintain its level of earnings in the second half.
Analysts' projected earnings for the steel maker in 2006 would fall back to 2004 levels, at about R8 or R9 a share, dropping again the following year to the R4 or R5 level. Assuming the latter levels hold, the share, minus the pending dividend payout, is on a forward price: earnings ratio of about 11 times. IS
Hydrogen Power
This energy source is the way to go, especially making use of South Africa's unique pebble bed modular nuclear reactor technology and abundant supplies of platinum, okay?
I could not have strung two more politically incorrect concepts together, but the fallout from Business Report's perhaps-too-flippant dismissal of President Thabo Mbeki's recent reference to the need to explore the "hydrogen economy" generated a lot of heat from several boffins, ranging from officials in the department of science and technology to experts and writers in the know.
They argue that the way things are going, the price of oil could hit $200 a barrel in five to 10 years, while greenhouse gases will make weather patterns go haywire and large parts of the earth will disappear under water from the melting polar caps. We'll all be up you-know-what creek without a paddle.
So, the boffins argue, it's about time for humankind to face reality, acknowledge nuclear energy is safe and push ahead with hydrogen power development using nuclear fuel to replace oil.
Most conventional car engines would be replaced by fuel cells containing platinum, which would be topped up with hydrogen at former petrol stations.
This is an oversimplification of the scenario being taken seriously by more and more scientists, and our learned president, and one can see a technological logic.
We have effectively endangered most of our planet using fossil fuels, and we have to find a safer way to power our cars, computers, televisions and the rest of the technology we rely on so heavily.
The boffins seem to be banking on nuclear and hydrogen power. This requires much more public debate than has taken place so far. Shall we start? LL