Tarrant has missed the mark on many fronts - and horribly
The only uncertainty is a product of the prospects of political interference with ICASA and the BAUTs seeking to induce regulatory changes outside the scope of processes of the ordinary law. We have 6 months of certainty during which time the BAUT (using the T for telcos rather than two) and ICASA can elect to clean up a lot of the mess of "liberalization" (which has been dropped from the ECA) and actually get to a market system that gradually shreds itself of nonsense (repealing section 7 of the ECA would be a very important step down the road)
I suspect that the lawyers of Sandton (as Hilton puts it) have read the judgment and those who were involved have been celebrating the windfall but there isn't much money for them going ahead without taking on some major headwind.
I really doubt that absent an urgent appeal being heard (and the ship has really sailed there as well) that the ruling and order is appealable by virtue of Section 21A of the Supreme Court Act (and whatever the equivalent provision in the Superior Courts Act is) [a recent judgment on the subject that is short but has quite a bit of quotable meat in it:
http://www.justice.gov.za/sca/judgments/sca_2013/sca2013-135.pdf]
The real blame should be laid at Dina Pule and Siphiwe Nyanda and the culture they created with respect to the ICT sector - that wonderful indaba. More than anyone the buck should stop with Jacob Zuma who appointed the two and whose general administration has been a disaster. Tarrant appears to assume that more regulation would solve the problems which is disastrously wrong, the reason we have a market failure in the sector is because of the elephant on the bridge not because the bridge is a problem but because elephants shouldn't be on human pedestrian bridges (or really bridges at all). We need effective regulation that is built to enable the market to work its magic - by necessary extension this is regulation that is not introduced coercively.
Every discussion on Vodacom and MTN and CTRs should make reference to the ICT Indaba and the millions spent on lobbying which ultimately was - as found by both the Public Protector and the Parliamentary Ethics Committee - to have been improper.
In MTN's case the Indaba plot of course thickened a lot which lead to recriminations and incriminations and the Hawks and whatnot - still waiting for the truth beyond MTN paid 15 mil to what was an improper activity (3 times more than Vodacom)
The bottom line is that the BAUT funded Dina's Nkandla and we have high communications costs - the two are connected.
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