Electronic Communications Amendment Bill - Your comments needed

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ellipsis

Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions
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The proposed amendments to the ECA have been published.

Interested parties are invited to comment by mid-December. If you have some opinions on the Amendment Bill (and we have plenty, so we're sure you will too), please post in this thread. MyBB will collate responses and present your comments to the DoC.

If you have any questions on specific amendments, feel free to ask. We will try to post something as well on the implications of the proposed amendments.

Deadline for comments: 2 December 2011.

Link to EC Amendment Bill in this post: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...CA-amendment?p=7184827&viewfull=1#post7184827
 
The Amendment should be broader and also address competition in the sector. For example, it should address the shortcomings of the current Act with regards to LLU.

W.
 
WireFree said:
The Amendment should be broader and also address competition in the sector. For example, it should address the shortcomings of the current Act with regards to LLU.

W.
Click to expand...

It does try to do this by simplifying the whole process that ICASA has to follow in order to impose remedies like LLU. Difficult to summarise as the relevant sections are very pretty dense but will post some stuff shortly.
 
rumours that this is to be withdrawn...
would be a pity if the whole things goes as there is some useful stuff
 
morning boss,
gazette with the withdrawal notice was published yesterday, no reasons given for the withdrawal although it is probably because the new Minister wants to have a look...

"The Department of Communication hereby withdraw the proposed..." (sic)
 
Withdrawal of the proposed Electronics Communications Amendment Bill

On 04 November 2011, the Department of Communications published the Electronic Communications (EC) Amendment Bill for public comment.

The Department wishes to withdraw the EC Amendment Bill with immediate effect. This is done to allow further consultation within government on the contents of the Bill. Once this process is concluded, the Bill will again be published to solicit further input from the broader ICT industry and affected stakeholders.

Government Gazette
Click to expand...

http://www.doc.gov.za/index.php?opt...tions-amendment-bill-&catid=88:press-releases

withdrawn.jpg
 
Last edited:
/love the grammar

Pathetic. Why withdraw it entirely? Why not amend the contentious content and maintain the momentum? Now they have to start the process all over again. I bet that when they are ready to have another go, there will be a new minister and it will be withdrawn again.
 
Having looked over the Bill I don't think they

The Bill really seemed to be aimed at two things:
(1) Bringing spectrum control under government control [effectively nationalizing the spectrum, in the same form as we have "nationalized" the mineral wealth in the ground] and reducing ICASAs control over the process.
(2) Giving ICASA slightly more scope in forcing competition and making life for the big operators difficult.

The first objective has raised some heavy objections, most of which is grounded: surely ICASA can and should independently manage the spectrum? Why the Minister and not ICASA etc ... Personally I think ICASA has cocked up the spectrum issue by giving the operators to much scope and a more executive and draconian approach might actually be in order, but how is the Minister going to keep that to be the case the problems of pre-existing rights still remains and the fact of the matter is that a big trouble maker is Sentech. The DoC is as likely to run into problems dealing with players with a budget 15 times larger than the department. Quite frankly all spectrum other issues should be moved out of the DoC and over to an Office for Radio Spectum Regulation in ICASA with a Director who reports to ICASA and communicates with the Minister directly.

The second objective seems to arise in connection with some of the anti-LLU (including the interestingly conjured concept of the wireless local loop) arguments coming from operators. Now amending the ECA while ICASA is putting in place regulations is counter-productive and as it is government intervention has made the process botched to begin with - of course if ICASA can't achieve the objective state fiat might be handy. In other words if ICASA brings out LLU regulations which bring the ire of the major operators and their legal team then it might be necessary to pass laws to force the issue but doing so admits that the ECA was botched to begin with amounts to a defeat. Until we have seen the LLU regulations and what the response is it is premature to consider legislation which could undermine or delay the process.

Unfortunately the new minister needs to achieve three almost contradictory things:
(1) Give ICASA its autonomy and independence
(2) Get Telkom to actually play ball - and this includes getting Telkom's competitors to play ball
(3) Ensure ICASA does its job.

Basically she needs to reduce interference while still participating and that really isn't an easy exercise.
 
The Government made them do it to slow down the LLU process.

People keep forgetting how much the Government really needs Telkom. For every new subscriber any of these ISP's get, Telkom get a piece of that pie. Think about that.

No one should be surprised, rather we should be disappointed, very disappointed as what we are seeing is the definition of stealing from the consumers and complete corruption without fear of consequences or backlash from the public or the "authorities".
 
VioAdmin said:
The Government made them do it to slow down the LLU process.

People keep forgetting how much the Government really needs Telkom. For every new subscriber any of these ISP's get, Telkom get a piece of that pie. Think about that.

No one should be surprised, rather we should be disappointed, very disappointed as what we are seeing is the definition of stealing from the consumers and complete corruption without fear of consequences or backlash from the public or the "authorities".
Click to expand...
Believe it or not but there are even bigger issues than LLU.

The main problem in the proposal is the control of spectrum allocation.
 
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