ICASA a disaster: WikiLeaks cable
WikiLeaks recently released over 100,000 U.S. embassy cables from around the world, which included thousands of cables from Southern Africa.
One of the cables published by WikiLeaks, which is described as ‘sensitive but unclassified’, focused on broadband and skills development needs in South Africa.
According to the document published on WikiLeaks, the cable was created on 23 October 2009 in Pretoria, and was based on a discussion that took place on 25 September 2009 between Ambassador Donald Gips and leading executives of U.S. ICT companies in South Africa.
The document states that the executives from AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Qualcomm “all agreed that the national regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), has been a ‘disaster’ since it was created in 2000.”
“ICASA has suffered from lack of independence and numerous DoC interventions (Ref C). The fees ICASA collects go straight to the National Treasury, yet the SAG (South African Government) does not provide enough financial resources to ICASA to fulfil its mandate,” the WikiLeaks document stated.
Ambassador Donald Gips
It continued, “The executives commented that the new Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, appears to have the vision and political will required to improve ICASA funding; however, adequate funding would need to be combined with leadership and policy changes at the DoC.”
“Skills development at the regulator has also been a problem, especially due to poaching of employees by the private sector.”
According to the document the “industry hopes for leadership changes at the DoC and increased ICASA independence under the Zuma administration have been dampened with the appointment of another political insider to the DoC with little technical expertise.”
“People hope the market will become more competitive in the long term with the entry of new undersea cable projects, increased international investment and collaborations, and the development of new technologies and other local broadband networks.”
“However, the regulatory environment, lack of an effective interconnection regime, spectrum scarcity, insufficient backhaul capacity, and skills shortages are expected to remain major challenges.”
AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Qualcomm were asked for comment, but the companies did not respond by the time of publication.
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