Your Internet service provider (ISP) could soon be providing more than just your broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) service. Telkom has revealed that it is going to shortly offer voice services, although not only wholesale DSL services to ISPs, too.

In an interview with TechCentral on Monday, Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko said that voice “ will be an exclusive Telkom product”.

Through its recently created wholesale office, Openserve, Telkom will manage to offer other ISPs the ability. And consumers will no longer need to apply for a line at Telkom to get, say, an account with MWeb, Maseko said.

As part of a restructuring plan, Telkom has moved accounting for the accessibility-line deficit — the collected money Telkom loses for every line in service before selling added services — under Openserve.

The notion is that Openserve will now maximise monetisation of the access lines that are accessible through its partners, including ISPs.

The wholesale men sell it as a product to ISPs and will bundle voice and data. The state of having a line from [Telkom] retail falls away altogether,” Maseko said.

He denied a suggestion that this was a move to so called “naked DSL”, which entails a standalone broadband service with no cost of an affiliated dial tone.

Consumers have long complained about having to pay rental fee in addition to an analogue line to a DSL subscription fee for fixed line broadband access when they do ’t need a dial tone.

“What we’re saying is that Telkom has been a constraint in terms of how we can leverage fixed voice as part of information,” Maseko clarified. “We will have a new wholesale merchandise that has both voice and info.”

What about Telkom offering cellular voice and data on a wholesale basis, also?

It ’s an option. We have looked at it,” Maseko said. “At some point we’ll get to mobile as well.”

The plan is to use mobile technology to serve customers in those places and to decommission 400 exchanges in the next three years. “We may also drive deeper broadband penetration through leveraging the spectrum harder,” Maseko said.

In its annual financial results, released on Monday, Telkom revealed the number of fixed lines in service had continued a 15-year-long decline in the year to 31 falling in the past 12 months to merely % by 6,5 3,2m.

But Maseko sought to play down the decline, saying the focus is less on pure line rental revenue and more on driving increase from value added services.

Telkom is offsetting the decline in the traditional voice business by focusing on other growth opportunities, including company services and data. — (c) 2016 NewsCentral Media