Minister lights fire under connectivity
Introducing the debate on her departmental budget in the national assembly, the minister said she had directed the Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) to take a number of steps to this end.
On broadband provision, Matsepe-Casaburri said she wanted Icasa to prioritise and urgently prescribe a list of essential facilities to ensure the electronic communications facilities connected to the SAT-3 submarine cable could be accessed soon.
Matsepe-Casaburri also also wants to speed up the process of unbundling the local loop – the cables that provide final connections to homes and businesses.
Licensed service providers and operators are being prevented from having free access to this local loop and it has been a major stumbling block in reducing the cost of communications.
"I have also taken the policy decision that, given the complexity of the local loop unbundling process on the one hand and the urgency for South Africa to enable all operators, appropriately licensed, to have access to the local loop on the other, the unbundling process in South Africa should be urgently implemented," she said.
The minister directed Icasa to urgently consider whether any of the existing value-added network licensees could be authorised to provide services as well as to provide and operate electronic communications facilities or networks.
She directed Icasa to take steps that would facilitate other electronic advances such as the transmission of television programme signals to cellphones.
These mobile broadcasting services should be provided on a single network with national coverage, she said.
"The network, which will form an integral part of the national information and communications technology backbone structure, will accordingly be operated on the basis of open and non-discriminatory access principles," she said. "Accordingly I have directed Icasa to allocate spectrum for a single network for the provision of digital mobile broadcasting services."
Other policy decisions the minister announced were aimed at assisting the poor and those in rural areas to have access to modern communications. In underserviced areas the issuing of licences would be reviewed.
Where there were more than one underserviced area in a province, Icasa should merge these and issue one provincial underserviced area network operator licence.
The authority must ensure that historically disadvantaged groups residing in the designated licence area must hold at least 51 percent of equity and ownership.
Health and education institutions, post offices, government offices and multipurpose community centres (now called Thusong centres) would have priority access in the roll-out of Sentech’s electronic communications networks for the provision of wireless broadband communication.
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