ICASA and the local telecoms conundrum
Altech through their court action last year gave us many I-ECNS licences – but nowhere to play. Over the last year many promising developments took place, but a lot still has to be done to ensure that local telecoms and broadband services reach world standards.
ICASA challenges
ICASA believes it will sort out frequency allocations and other related issues before its financial year ends in March 2010. There are however warning signs that it will drag on into the next financial year.
I am pleased that I am not employed by ICASA. I say this because as an outsider looking in, I can actually feel sorry for the people. The processes laid down by the Electronic Communications Act are cumbersome and extremely time consuming. Between consultation and analysis paralysis decisions cannot happen efficiently. Take the table of frequency allocation; it is now two years overdue. Some of our broadband issues are tied up in spectrum allocations.
The problem with ICASA is that employees are disempowered. Even the simplest of issues have to be documented and motivated to the ICASA Council for a decision. Then the legal department sits on it for a long time pondering over one or two words. Often documents go back and forth. ICASA need to empower its senior management to make decisions and only reserve Council decisions for major issues.
Towards the end of this year ICASA took some proactive action to deal with the high cellphone interconnect rates, but their approach was not well received by the cellular companies.
Yes our cellular rate are way too high and a reduction in the interconnect rate could go some way to reduce call rates, but in a free economy should we have the Regulator and the Minister of Communication involved in setting prices?
The operators responded when the Minister of Communications took them to task. But to what extend cellular rate will come down is not clear. My crystal ball says by very little.
The other question on my mind is whether the minister talking to the cellular companies is not snubbing ICASA. “If you can’t do it, I will show you how!” Could we have a worse case of undermining? Why doesn’t the Minister see to it that ICASA is adequately funded so that they can employ the staff they need to fulfill their mandate?
Better broadband
Towards to end of the year there was a glimmer of hope that ISPs would reduce the cost of bandwidth following Screamer Telecom and DigiChilli’s offers of uncapped ADSL, but only time will tell whether it will spark similar moves from the bigger players.
We did get a Broadband and Spectrum Policy from the Department of Communication in 2009, but how much it really means is again debatable.
So where to in 2010? There are moves at Telkom to introduce a faster ADSL offering of 8 Megs. They have started trials, but when will it become available to you and me? When I asked Telkom CEO Reuben September he said soon. My question: “Before the world cup?” Yes!
What are Neotel and others doing? I guess it is a wait and see game!
ICASA and SA telecoms – discussion
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