Government battles it out in telecoms space
Government appears to be battling among themselves in the undersea cabling market.
Cyril Ramaphosa has recently come out of the submarine cable closet as Seacom get ready to roll out – but a lurch to the left sees ‘both SA’s Communications Ministers’ claiming a role for the State and they planning to lay their own undersea cables. This is according to the Democratic Alliance’s Dene Smuts.
As everyone waits for Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri to publish her proposals on landing rights for submarine cables, Seacom has publicly announced its investors, which includes Cyril Ramaphosa, who has for months shied away from publicity on his backing of the project.
“South African investors constitute 50% and African investors a reported full 75%. Landing rights are automatically part of Neotel’s licence and therefore Seacom seems to have its case sewn up in anticipation of any conditions being contemplated by the Minister and Department of Communications,” said DA spokesperson on Communications Dene Smuts.
“Meantime, Public Enterprise Minister Alec Erwin’s Infraco has been legislated into being amid estimates from the Public Enterprises Director-General that another R2bn of taxpayers’ money will be needed for the network and cable,” she said.
Smuts said that Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri had presided over a sector that is supposed to be systematically liberalizing, but has proclaimed a paradigm shift in African thinking in favor of State intervention.
“Sufficient investment in infrastructure is not occurring,” said Minister Matsepe-Casaburri in Parliament in November.
Smuts said that the absence of competition, which has slowed SA communications down to a snail’s pace since 1997, was the product of policy failure.
“Telkom was given too long an exclusivity period and government then made the mistake of opting for a duopoly instead of full competition. Moreover, it tried to introduce the duopoly under adverse investment conditions, and then the Minister made a bad situation worse by announcing, first, that Value-Added Network Services licencees, including Internet Service Providers, could build their own infrastructure – and then revoking the announcement.”
“Now she is threatening to refuse private sector cables landing rights unless they meet onerous ownership conditions and the requirements of the Nepad Network,” said Smuts.
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