The residents have now signed a petition calling on Telkom to offer services in line with its commitment to serve the public.
A new townhouse complex in Roodepoort applied for landlines last month. But its residents were shocked to hear that they would not get phone lines because of recurring cable theft in the area.
In the petition served on Telkom this week, the residents complained that their children in high schools and in institutions of higher learning were unable to conduct research because they could not access the internet.
After their pleas to Telkom were turned down in January, they approached the regulatory body, the Independent Communications Authority of SA, which also rejected their request to force the parastatal to install telephone cables.
The authority's consumer affairs manager, Gumani Malebusha, said: "We cannot force Telkom to install cables in areas where they put cables and they were stolen repeatedly. We have no regulations to force them to do that."
Communications technology analyst Arthur Goldstuck said Telkom's reluctance to install cables indicated failure by the government to deliver services. "Citizens have a right to communication and Telkom has a responsibility to install or fix the cables,"
he claimed.
Goldstuck said although cable theft was a challenge, law enforcement agencies and Telkom had to find a solution rather than deny citizens access.
Telkom spokesman Pynee Chetty said the increase in cable theft was creating an environment of a rapidly deteriorating service quality.
"And it is severely affecting the delivery of sustainable ICT services to customers. In many high-theft areas, cables are repeatedly stolen, sometimes just days after replacement. Of course, this is affecting our capacity to deliver services within acceptable time intervals," he said.
In 2012, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa told parliament that cable theft cost the country R5bn a year. The most affected parastatals are Eskom, Spoornet and Telkom.
Telkom says on its website that it has experienced a significant increase in copper cable theft as a result of an international rise in copper prices.
Interventions included patrolling of identified hotspots, moving overhead cables underground and deploying alternative technology, through either fibreoptic or wireless applications.
"In cases where it has become virtually impossible to eliminate service interruptions, wireless-based products are offered to customers as an alternative to the normal fixed-line service," the company says, adding that this is dependent on customer being within the footprint of the available wireless technology.
Source: The Times via I-Net Bridge
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