| By Gavin Chait,
on 18 January 2007
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 You'll miss it if it's not there
The South African government has quite a list: fuel, electricity, education, telecommunications, transport, and information (amongst others).
Sure, there are private petrol, education, transport and telecommunications companies, but that is just icing. The core components, without which the rest cannot operate, belong to the state.
Many countries consider these types of products worthy of controlling. Does it serve the public?
Witness the furore in Germany when Russia cut off their gas supplies during a dispute with Belarus. Eskom, the South African state energy supplier, is suffering the indignity of demand that is “higher than was anticipated for this period," according to the company's managing director for transmission, Jacob Marog.
Only state-owned monopolies can talk like that. Private companies discuss the unprecedented demand for their products and the opportunity for growth.
Apple's iPod sales increased by 50% compared with the same period a year ago. Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer said: "iPod demand was extraordinary," over the recent festive season. Their new iPhone is to run on US-based Cingular’s telecommunications network. Apple would be very surprised if Cingular capped the amount of bandwidth their subscribers could use and, in so doing, prevented them from downloading songs from Apple iTunes.
Yet this is precisely what Telkom, the South African state telecommunications monopoly does. They cap bandwidth. They cap telephone bills. They cap lines.
Reuters, the media and information group, which has been expanding in countries such as India, is not investing in South Africa. CEO Tom Glocer said his company was reluctant to do the same in SA because of Telkom’s high prices and poor bandwidth.
This is the real cost of state monopolies. Not only isn’t there enough of the product that was considered so important in the first place. But you’re unable to find any other supply.
A single supplier of anything is like having a single supplier of toilet paper. You’ll only notice the problem when you most need it and, by then, it’s far too late.
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