Ivy may cost SA access to $300m cable

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Ivy may cost SA access to $300m cable

There’s now proof, if it were needed, that communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and her director-general in the department of communications, Lyndall Shope-Mafole, are undermining foreign investment in SA’s telecommunications industry.

Russell Southwood of Balancing Act Africa is reporting today that Mainstreet Technologies, a company that wants to build a US$300m fibre-optic system along Africa’s west coast, may bypass SA because of government policies, still in draft form, which will forbid cable systems from landing here that are not majority owned by SA companies.

The proposed Mainstreet cable will connect 12 countries, some of which already connected to the existing Sat-3 system, according to Southwood, who spoke to the project’s CEO, Nigerian businesswoman Funke Opeke.

 

[AdLo]

That picture of Ivy is just lovely.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Poison Ivy - how apt a name.

 

[semiautomatix]

Grating my cheese, grating my cheese. I think I may have to stop reading these articles - definitely not good for my BP!

 

[stoke]

Um .. do we want outside countries owning the landing point?

 

[semiautomatix]

Um .. do we want outside countries owning the landing point?

Yeah, you're right - the USA and Europe have no idea about the correct way of handling telecoms! The DoC knows better...

 

[stix]

Stokes point aside, how many chances does this being get before she gets booted ?

 

[feo]

If they don't get their heads out of the sand, we'll be stuck with SAT3 forever!

 

[bwana]

FYI http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=87976

 

[ronan73]

DoC looks at it this way: NO KICKBACK NO CABLE

 

[Sneeky]

but what about the tsunami

 

[Gatecrasher]

I don't believe that financial kickbacks are an issue. That is a very naive and simplistic take on the topic.

But there is an ideological struggle going on between the DoC and the ICT industry in SA. The DoC have made it quite clear that in their view private enterprise cannot be trusted as the owners of strategic infrastructure. And they see underwater cables as strategic infrastructure. Perversly they would point at Telkom and the opportunities that have been squandered due to Telkom's profiteering. Since privitisation, SA Telecoms has been going steadily downhill on the international pop charts. Fixed line infrastructure has receded.

There is now a very different regime sitting in the DoC than the one that was responsible for selling off the family jewels (for a song). The DoC see that debacle as a failure on the part of private enterprise to deliver the goods. They don't see their own failure in not allowing privatisation and liberalisation to go far enough. They beleive they are doing a great job.

They dearly want to be heroes of the struggle. They want to deliver dirt cheap broadband to the masses. They want to see governmental enterprise triumph over private enterprise. It is the idealists, political fundamentalists, who have taken over at the DoC, the realists fled the coop long ago to pursue their own financial ambitions.

One of the problems with liberalisation is that it usually entails even greater governmental control. I'm still confident that SEACOM and EASSY will be landing in SA, but probably under onorous conditions.

It is politics and power, not finances at play.

 

[Juice]

Not so sure about that. Cyril Ramaphosa's surprise bid for a stake in the SEACOM cable to 'bring it in line' with the DoC's ownership requirements smacks a little bit of profiteering to me. It's not too far-fetched to imagine that the 'regulation' was engineered specifically to protect Cyril's business interests...

 

[ronan73]

Government seems to look after there pockets first and public interest comes way last.
True it is politics and power, but he who has the money has the power.

 

[LazyLion]

Their performance should be rated on an annual scale of investment, expansion and job-creation. If they did not contribute to any of the above, or hindered it in any way, they don't get a salary!

At least that's the way they run in Utopia!!!