By Douglas Carew
Rumours have spread like wildfire around South Africa that Telkom has a "magic number" that enables people to phone cellphones at a reduced rate. Unfortunately, those taken in by the rumour face mega bills at the end of the month as they will have to pay the full rate for calling cellphones.
In fact, this cheap-call scheme does exist - but for Telkom employees and not the general public.
The good news is that Telkom is considering extending the scheme to the general public who would then benefit from cheap calls from ordinary phones to cellphones - if Telkom can overcome legal hurdles.
Emails circulating around the country have claimed that when wanting to phone a cell number from a landline, people should first dial 1007. They would then be asked to enter the cell number and then press #. The call would then be charged at Telkom rates, not cellphone rates.
According to the email, the Telkom 1007 line provided a cheaper way to make a landline-to-cellphone call because the call was not routed through the cellphone networks, but rather via the Internet.
Therefore Telkom did not have to pay fees to the cellphone network operators each time a caller phoned someone's cellphone.
According to an industry source, Telkom reportedly had to pay the network operator R1.17 out of the R1.65 charged to the consumer.
Telkom spokesperson Mandy Carlo said Telkom had piloted the system internally for company employees only. "We did not advertise this externally and members of the public who phoned 1007 before making cellphone calls will be charged the normal rate."
"The Telkom 1007 Pilot is a Voice Over Internet Protocol solution that enables a Telkom customer to make calls to the mobile networks. It operates on a fixed line access code (1007) that routes the call to an international internet protocol network," she said.
Carlo said if the internal trial with Telkom employees proved successful, the company may extend the pilot to the general market.
If Telkom were to go ahead and market their 1007 pilot to the public, many more people could potentially start using Telkom phones to make calls to cellphones instead of using their own cellphones.
Potentially, cellular service providers MTN and Vodacom could drop their call rates to be more competitive or could challenge the legality of Telkom's service.
Asked how MTN would respond if Telkom went ahead and marketed the service to the public, MTN spokesperson Yvonne Muthien said at this stage the company could not give specific comment as it was not yet clear what type of new service Telkom had in mind.
"If the technology available changes the services Telkom offers to the market, then Telkom would need to approach the regulating body Icasa (the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) to change its licence conditions," Muthien said.
For now Telkom and the service providers had an agreement that if a call were made from a Telkom phone to a cellphone, the cellphone service provider got a percentage of the call cost. Similarly if the call were made from a cellphone to a Telkom phone, then Telkom got a percentage of the revenue from the call that was charged to the consumer.