Dropped call
Simmering tension over this issue has finally erupted, with Sentech blaming the communications department for the shortage of funds and a lack of clear direction.
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, in turn, blames treasury officials for short changing Sentech, which her department considers crucial to cutting the cost of telecoms and taking services to rural areas. And Sentech staff blame their executives, whose bitter restructuring process purged the organisation of many fine managers and technicians who will not easily be replaced, given the skills shortage.
Enough finger-pointing — there is an urgent need for action. The 2010 Soccer World Cup is an immovable deadline, because it is vital that matches be broadcast using digital rather than analogue signals. Sentech needs R955m to upgrade the network but the treasury has allocated R650m. That is nonsense. Give it the money. Sentech’s focus right now has to be digitisation. None of its other projects are anywhere near as urgent, and some are quite dispensable.
Matsepe-Casaburri also wants Sentech to build a national wireless network, partly to take distance education and healthcare to rural areas. She says the private sector will not tackle unprofitable areas so the government must take the lead, but the government’s record in the telecoms arena is one of utter ineptitude.
Confusing things further is Infraco, a new state-owned entity created to roll out a national telecoms backbone and invest in undersea cables to bring more bandwidth to SA. But that is supposed to be Sentech’s job, and Sentech makes no bones about seeing Infraco as “a direct competitor”. So two state entities are demanding cash to do what Telkom and Neotel are already doing.
Meanwhile, private operators pleaded for years for permission to lay their own cables and end antiquated laws forcing them to buy network capacity from Telkom. Finally, MTN and Vodacom have been allowed to do that. So it is disingenuous of Matsepe Casaburri to say private players are unwilling to build the infrastructure to cut costs and reach every corner of SA, when her own laws explicitly prevented that.
If private operators fail to reach rural areas, incentives could be devised to encourage them. That would be more effective than letting Sentech wrangle for the R3,1bn it needs to do the job, especially since it has been given only R500m. Imagine how quickly the cellular operators would act if they were given that R500m.
Government has gone so far with Sentech and Infraco, how- ever, that backtracking now would be humiliating. But they do not belong in a sector where things change too rapidly for state entities to keep pace. Last year MTN talked to Telkom with a view to buying its fixed-line facilities. So if Sentech and Infraco have a story worth telling, private players will listen. Asset stripping would end the bottomless pit of financial demands and place the facilities and staff with operators that know how to run these things.
It will take brave people who are prepared to become unpopular to champion those radical ideas. Unfortunately, politicians would rather be wrong and inept than brave and unpopular.
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