Internet providers lose out on licences

Lesley Stones

Lesley Stones is an award winning journalist, and worked for Business Day as an ICT journalist until 2009. Lesley is currently a travel journalist,...

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Technology companies hoping to win a licence to build their own voice and data networks have been snubbed by the regulatory authority and will still be forced to lease their bandwidth from the incumbent telecoms operators.

Internet service providers had hoped that an onerous process of updating every telecoms licence to comply with the new Electronic Communications Act was a chance to end their dependence on the larger players such as Telkom and Neotel.

But the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) is issuing only a handful of the highly prized licences that let operators build their own networks. Those licences will go to the companies already able to do so, including Telkom, Sentech, Neotel, iBurst and the cellular operators.

Every other player is being offered a far less flexible licence that lets them provide only electronic communications services over a network leased from the larger players.

MWeb, Internet Solutions and Altech Autopage are all craving the freedom to construct their own national networks to control their costs and quality of service. All three have run trials using pilot networks, which would create competition in the market far more effectively than keeping network infrastructure in the hands of a few dominant players.

Internet Solutions CEO Angus MacRobert said it was disappointing that so far every company holding an old licence as a Value Added Network Services (Vans) provider was getting a licence that prevented them building their own infrastructure. “We are looking for a full licence,” he said.

Altech Autopage had already predicted it would be denied a full-scale licence and has launched a legal challenge to halt the entire process. Altech CEO Craig Venter said clarity was needed on whether old Vans licences allowed companies to build their own network, in which case they were entitled to new licences bestowing the same conditions.

Icasa spokesman Sekgoela Sekgoela said the court hearing set down for July 29 was not interrupting the licence conversion process.

ICASA licensing discussion