Minister explains telecoms appeal
COMMUNICATIONS Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has spoken up to explain why she is appealing against a legal verdict that promises to revolutionise the telecommunications industry, insisting that she is not opposed to greater competition.
The minister is challenging a verdict won by technology company Altech that grants about 300 voice and data carriers the right to build their own networks. Her decision to appeal has been widely condemned, particularly since the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) accepted the verdict and has already invited companies to collect their new licences.
Matsepe-Casaburri was not challenging the verdict because she was against liberalisation, said her spokesman, Joe Makhafola. But the introduction of new operators must be clearly regulated to ensure stability and growth for the sector and to protect the public interest. She was appealing to protect SA’s policy of “managed liberalisation”, which the minister says is in line with international best practices.
The Electronics Communications Act says Icasa can only accept applications for Individual Electronic Communications Network Service licences (I-ECNS) after the minister issues a policy directive. Last year she directed Icasa to consider some applications for the new licences.
In her application for leave to appeal, Matsepe-Casaburri said the judge erred in setting aside some ministerial policies and erred in declaring that Altech was entitled to build its own network. He had also ventured into the area of policy making, which should be left to the minister.
The minister also plans to amend the act to stipulate that operators are not automatically entitled to a licence that lets them build their own network. Without that licence they are forced to lease bandwidth from dominant operators such as Telkom.
However, Altech CEO Craig Venter said Icasa would be in contempt of court if it did not issue the new licences, since the pending appeal did not nullify the existing verdict. The judgment was emphatically in Altech’s favour and the judge showed a clear grasp of the issues set out in 1000 pages of submissions, so he doubted the appeal would be successful.
“The market needs to be liberalised and for the past two years since the act was implemented nothing has happened in terms of issuing licences. Liberalisation is important in creating employment and for giving consumers the ultimate benefit of lower prices,” Venter said.
The minister’s decision to keep fighting has been condemned by the Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The CEO of Electronic Communications Networks (ECN), John Holdsworth, has also slated it as “a thinly disguised attempt to protect the incumbent operators from competition”.
The minister was out of touch with the mood of the industry and consumer frustrations, he said. “In a well-functioning market, competing suppliers are incentivised to reduce costs, pass reductions to consumers and innovate with new products and services,” he said. “The regulatory roadblock we’ve been living with has prevented this from happening in SA, and the ultimate loser is the long-suffering consumer, who has to put up with dysfunctional suppliers and unacceptably high prices.”
It was also exceedingly worrying that the government would seek to change an act when it lost a court case, he said. “If the minister’s appeal is successful, ECN will call for an industry-wide class action, which we’ll take right up to the Constitutional Court if necessary,” he said.
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