E-rate battle stage set
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) announced that it will hold a two-day public hearing on the Draft Regulations on the E-rate. The E-rate aims to provide a 50% discount on Internet services to be granted to public schools and public further education and training institutions.
According to the draft regulations a discount of no less than 50% is applicable to public schools or public further training schools, as well as independent schools or private further education and training institutions, as prescribed, to be entitled to the discount for utilising Internet services provided by a licensee.
ICASA published General Notice 534 of the Draft Regulations on 07 December 2009 in the Government Gazette, but the E-rate is certainly nothing new. The E-rate dates back to November 2001 in a document entitled Strategy for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education, but since then very little has transpired other than broken promises and big dreams.
Former Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said in her budget speech in June 2004 that, “From the beginning of the 2005 school year, public schools will be charged only 50% of the normal rate for their Internet calls”. This promise, like many of her other promises, fell by the wayside and despite being signed into law in May 2006 most schools still don’t see any tangible benefit from this initiative.
“The implementation of the E-rate has been a stellar failure, most notably due to the failure of those drafting the regulations to force Telkom to provide the discount to downstream licensees who in turn are providing Internet services to schools,” says Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions director Dominic Cull.
The hearing is scheduled for 4 and 5 March, with various role-players set to do oral presentations, including Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Neotel, Broadband Infraco, MWEB, ISPA and TENET.
E-rate for schools << do you think it will happen?
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