10GB free data for every South African household — and other political dreams

Despite the South African government’s repeated pronouncements on providing universal broadband access, it has only ever paid lip service to the ideal.

It leaves the hard work of connecting every South African up to the private sector, then criticises how the industry does it or deliberately frustrates their efforts.

When it isn’t an obstacle to better and cheaper broadband, government comes up with pie-in-the-sky ideas that are never realised.

One of these ideas is former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni’s promise to provide every South African household with 10GB of free data.

First announced in February 2022, Ntshavheni doubled down in April of that year, saying it would become a reality within three years.

Between Ntshavheni’s two pronouncements, former public works minister Patricia de Lille tabled a plan to provide households with 50GB of free data by the 2025/26 financial year.

It set a short-term goal of providing 10GB of data by the 2023/24 financial year — a deadline that passed in March.

As usual, there has been no progress on government’s lofty broadband goals and requests for an update on the project have been met with silence.

With President Cyril Ramaphosa appointing a new cabinet at the end of June, a new Minister of Communications must now first find his feet before tackling the legacy baggage he’s been saddled with.

In the meantime, South Africa’s telecommunications industry has continued its work of rolling out and maintaining network coverage.

Between Vodacom and MTN, nearly 100% of the country’s population has 2G coverage, while around 99% have 3G and 4G access.

Upstart wireless broadband provider Rain has launched 5G in several small towns where residential fibre networks may not yet reach.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s fibre network operators are rolling out infrastructure beyond the country’s affluent neighbourhoods and into dense, low-income urban townships.

Vumatel, an entirely private fibre player, has shown up the majority state-owned Telkom in this regard with its Vuma Reach and Vuma Key projects.

It helped pave the way for several other township initiatives by major fibre players and smaller operators, including Telkom’s Openserve, Frogfoot, Metrofibre, eKasi Fibre, Isizwe, and Illitha Telecommunications.

Government, on the other hand, has seen its initiatives fail. Prominent examples are retail fixed wireless access provider Sentech MyWireless, and national fibre network operator Broadband Infraco.

In addition, government actively frustrated industry efforts to provide broadband services, compete against Telkom, and drive down prices.

Trying to kill Vodacom, MTN

The ANC government’s desire to control telecommunications in South Africa dates back to before 1993, when it threatened to revoke the cellular licences granted to Vodacom and MTN as soon as it came to power.

According to a paper by Professor Robert Horowitz titled South African Telecommunications: History and Prospects, the ANC believed the National Party government was unilaterally restructuring the telecoms industry — “a form of privatisation through the back door”.

The ANC also did not support the adoption of the GSM standard, but reportedly preferred the American Mobile Phone Standard (AMPS), and the old Scandinavian analogue system.

Had the ANC won its battle against the GSM standard, it may have set South Africa back many years.

Horowitz wrote that the battle over cellular licences and standards was eventually defused after former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk met over the issue.

In the end, the ANC agreed not to oppose the granting of the cellular licences, and in exchange, the NP government agreed to back down on planned amendments to the Post and Telecommunications Act.

Trying to monopolise the Internet with Telkom

Some years later, Telkom tried to convince the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) that its state-sanctioned monopoly over voice services should extend to the Internet.

Satra was the precursor to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.

Mercifully, Satra announced in 1997 that the Internet is an area of competition in terms of the Telecommunications Act.

However, this did nothing to address Telkom’s almost total monopoly on fixed-line infrastructure.

The government granted Telkom an “exclusivity period” for five years from 1997 to 2002, during which time it had to prepare for competition that would explode onto the scene.

No competition to Telkom launched in 2002.

The so-called “second network operator” only launched in August 2006 as Neotel (now Liquid), bringing none of the residential fixed-line broadband competition South Africans were promised.

Liberalisation by litigation

While government interference in the telecommunications sector has been plagued by failures, there have been a few notable successes.

Most important among these was replacing the Telecommunications Act with the Electronic Communications Act.

However, industry players still had to haul former communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri to court to enforce the rights granted under the new law.

In a 2008 ruling that became known as the “Altech Case”, licensed operators won the right to build their own networks.

Amid the legal battle, the late Matsepe-Casaburri also frustrated the landing of Seacom in South Africa.

Matsepe-Casaburri announced in 2007 that all undersea cables landing in South Africa must be majority-owned by South African companies.

This would have effectively blocked both Seacom and EASSy from landing in South Africa.

Had the government succeeded in blocking the cables, South Africa’s broadband landscape would probably look very different.

The competition Seacom introduced for Telkom’s SAT3/SAFE undersea cable system is credited with dramatically reducing international bandwidth prices.

Combined with the competition stimulated by the outcome of the Altech Case, broadband prices in South Africa began plummeting in 2009.

However, the industry’s biggest wins would only come years after the Altech Case, when Vumatel burst onto the scene in 2014.

Vumatel’s launch of a residential fibre network in direct competition with Telkom set off a gold rush.

This led to the proliferation of affordable high-speed uncapped fibre broadband services across South Africa, including low-income neighbourhoods that operators are now targeting as their next frontier.

Meanwhile, all government efforts to participate as a telecommunications network provider have failed.

The only success the government has been part of is enabling companies who know what they’re doing to do their jobs well — and getting out of the way.