These are the voyages of the Starship DoC…
The Electronic Communications Act (ECA) has been signed into law, the second national operator (SNO), NeoTel, has officially launched, the formation of Infraco has been implemented with a view to improving broadband connectivity while driving down costs, and the local loop unbundling process is under way.
In fact, in her recent budget vote speech before the National Assembly, Aunty Ivy announced that “given the complexity of 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”.
So it seems one of the most talked about and discussed issues in recent times in the telecoms sector is finally going to receive the urgent attention it warrants. But wait – what does Poison Ivy consider to be an ‘urgent implementation’?
The very next paragraph of here speech gives us a clue. So will we see it unbundled in the next three months, or perhaps inside six months, or even a year? Oh no, we are working to Aunty Ivy’s idea of an urgent schedule, so as she points out: “The unbundling process should be completed by 1 November 2011”.
To be fair on her and assuming this deadline is met (unlike most of the others she has set), it will prove to be slightly faster than the licensing of the SNO, and around the same length of time it took to sort out the third cellular licence, so I suppose we can at least say she is consistent – but speedy certainly isn’t a word that can be associated with our communications minister, that’s for sure.
Beam me up, Ivy
During the same speech, she spoke about the infamous ‘digital divide’, saying that recently she had been made painfully aware of this when she was reminded by an interviewer that, in Sandton, a businessman or housewife complains about not being able to get 64 Kbps of broadband speed at home when, down the road in Alexandra township, the majority of its residents don’t even have a telephone to call for medical help or police assistance.
Without wanting to make light of a serious issue such as a lack of facilities to call for emergency help, is Poison Ivy even remotely aware of how utterly ridiculous it is that there should even be businessmen in this country still using 64Kbps connections?
That the costs of Internet access are around 16 times higher in SA than in comparable nations like Brazil? That the standard access speed in Latvia is 10Mbps?
Yes, you read that right, Latvia. Not technologically advanced nations like the US, Japan or South Korea. Latvia – a country that most people wouldn’t be able to find on a map of Eastern Europe, let alone name its capital city. And 10Mbps is a standard speed there, not one of the top of the range, more expensive offerings.
Does she even realise how important connectivity speeds, decent, affordable telecommunications and technological innovation is going to be come the 2010 World Cup?
Well, perhaps. After all, she announced in the same speech that Sentech is on schedule to meet government's commitment by providing about 80% Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) coverage by 2010.
And to add a verbatim quote from the speech: “Further, Sentech intends to launch at least one high definition television (HDTV) satellite channel, in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Sentech will also build a second teleport to provide additional capacity needed for the 2010 satellite uplink requirement.”
Teleport?
Now it all makes sense – why bother with all the red tape that surrounds improved connectivity and local loop unbundling if we’re all going to be able to teleport from one place to another, just like Captain Kirk, by 2010.
In fact, had I known she had people working on teleportation, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so scathing of her performance in the past – although I doubt it!
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