{"id":48498,"date":"2012-04-24T17:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=48498"},"modified":"2012-04-24T17:02:25","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:02:25","slug":"will-the-doc-ever-get-its-act-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/columns\/48498-will-the-doc-ever-get-its-act-together.html","title":{"rendered":"Will the DoC ever get its act together?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Department of Communications (DoC)<\/a> first announced that it wanted to conduct a broad review of South Africa\u2019s information and communications technology (ICT) policies it was met with scepticism from industry and the media alike.<\/p>\n

At the end of the event, when the chairpersons of the various commissions reported what was discussed over the two days (19\u201320 April 2012), nothing was said that might assuage the sceptics.<\/p>\n

The very last presentation of the day left a particularly bad taste when all the Telecommunications commission seemed to have managed was a change of name to the \u201cICT Ecosystem\u201d commission.<\/p>\n

Programme director and deputy director-general of the Department of Communications, Themba Phiri<\/a>, remarked that the renamed commission, which was chaired by Vodacom\u2019s<\/a> head of regulatory affairs, Pakamile Pongwana, had \u201cclearly deviated from its mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questions from the media about when the commission got its new name and whether it signified a change in its mandate drew a sharp response from Phiri, who seemed to feel that the press was being antagonistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a question from the media,\u201d Phiri told delegates. He later answered the question saying that the commission\u2019s mandate hadn\u2019t changed and that it is still a telecommunications commission.<\/p>\n

Considering the negativity around the DoC\u2019s \u201cNational Integrated ICT Policy Colloquium\u201d, it is understandable that Phiri might feel like they aren\u2019t being given a fair chance.<\/p>\n

However, the DoC\u2019s recent past and distant history have ruined the department\u2019s reputation as far as talk shops, colloquia, indabas, and other \u201cengagements\u201d are concerned.<\/p>\n

There must be some way out of here<\/h3>\n

As was pointed out in a previous MyBroadband column published just before the DoC\u2019s National Integrated ICT Policy Colloquium kicked off, we\u2019ve seen all this before.<\/p>\n

Government made big promises to the telecommunications industry and the South African public, promises on which they have either back-peddled or haven\u2019t delivered.<\/p>\n

Three of the larger broken promises were that of the second network\/national operator (SNO), local loop unbundling (LLU)<\/a>, and the migration to digital broadcasting.<\/p>\n

\"Ivy

Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri<\/p><\/div>\n

Said the joker to the thief<\/h3>\n

During a process the government called the \u201cmanaged liberalisation\u201d of the telecoms sector, Telkom<\/a> was given a five-year monopoly within which to prepare for competition.<\/p>\n

This monopoly supposedly came to an end when the SNO, Neotel<\/a>, launched in 2006, albeit without the unbundling of the local loop being completed.<\/p>\n

However, if you believe what Neotel has been saying lately, they were never the so-called SNO.<\/p>\n

Perhaps what Neotel meant to point out with such a statement, was that for them to be South Africa\u2019s second national fixed-line operator they needed access to backhaul infrastructure and the local loop, or the \u201clast mile\u201d of copper that connects homes and businesses to the national network.<\/p>\n

Neotel was promised the fibre infrastructure of Transnet<\/a> with which to bootstrap its infrastructure roll-out, but instead ended up having to rent it. Transnet\u2019s old fibre network is now managed by Broadband Infraco<\/a>, a recently formed state-owned enterprise struggling to get on its feet.<\/p>\n

The cost of bandwidth over SA\u2019s national fibre networks is credited as one of the major cost drivers of broadband access. According to industry players this local bandwidth costs more than international bandwidth does.<\/p>\n

\"Siphiwe

Siphiwe Nyanda, former Minister of Communications<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s too much confusion<\/h3>\n

One of the topics discussed at the DoC\u2019s previous colloquia in 2005 was local loop unbundling. This would effectively give other network operators access to the Telkom\u2019s last-mile copper infrastructure that connects the end-user to its network.<\/p>\n

In 2007 the late Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri<\/a> told parliament that Telkom would have until 1 November 2011 to unbundle the local loop, effectively extending the incumbent\u2019s monopoly on the last mile by another four years.<\/p>\n

Very little progress appeared to have been made in this regard until Roy Padayachie took the helm at the Ministry of Communications at the end of 2010.<\/p>\n

Padayachie set the ambitious goal of actually making the November 2011 deadline, resulting in the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA)<\/a> convening hearings to discuss the issue of LLU.<\/p>\n

There was no shortage of drama at the hearings, with proceedings being halted for an hour while Telkom and ICASA deliberated privately.<\/p>\n

However, rather than actually implementing LLU by the deadline, ICASA only managed to release a document on 30 November 2011 with a list of new deadlines.<\/p>\n

To its credit, ICASA has by-and-large met these new deadlines, including introducing a reduction in wholesale ADSL<\/a> prices by slashing the prices of Telkom\u2019s IPConnect product by 30%.<\/p>\n

It would seem that those private deliberations with Telkom generated more tangible results than over a decade of policy-making and deadline-setting had managed to achieve.<\/p>\n

One can\u2019t help but look at the majority stake government owns in Telkom<\/a> (39.8%, plus 10.9% through the Public Investment Corporation) and wonder what South Africa\u2019s telecoms landscape would look like if the entity responsible for setting the policy that dictates the actions of the regulator didn\u2019t have a vested interest in the incumbent fixed-line operator.<\/p>\n

\"Roy

Roy Padayachie<\/p><\/div>\n

I can\u2019t get no relief<\/h3>\n

The final witness in this session of the court of public opinion is the mess that is South Africa\u2019s migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT).<\/p>\n

Switch-off of South Africa\u2019s analogue broadcasting signals was originally scheduled for 1 November 2011 (a popular choice of deadline, it seems).<\/p>\n

This is the date by which every South African household was meant to be receiving their television signals digitally so that the old analogue transmissions could be switched off.<\/p>\n

With analogue broadcasts no longer taking up so much precious spectrum, a number of frequencies would be freed up that could be used for other things. Mobile network operators are particularly interested in this \u201cdigital dividend\u201d to roll out high-speed broadband technology such as Long Term Evolution (LTE)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, despite the DoC appointing the Digital Broadcasting Advisory Board in 2001, the Digital Migration Working Group in 2005, and the Digital Dzonga in 2010, here we are in 2012 and SA\u2019s digital migration still hasn\u2019t started from the public\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons for the delay is that during 2010, the DoC under former Minister Siphiwe Nyanda<\/a> and director-general Mamodupi Mohlala<\/a>, said that the standard originally selected and formally announced in the Government Gazette was being relooked.<\/p>\n

Padayachie, who took over from Nyanda, later admitted that South Africa entertained advances from the Brazillian government<\/a>\u00a0and agreed to reconsider the standard for which policies and regulations had been published for years. This re-investigation of the standard of choice caused the delay.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Padayachie managed to make the best of a bad situation by using the opportunity to leapfrog a technology generation, officially announcing that SA would adopt the DVB-T2 standard.<\/p>\n

This still had an implication for the switch-off deadline however, as Sentech would have to upgrade its existing DVB-T deployment.<\/p>\n

Padayachie set the new switch-off date for December 2013, but a new delay in the switch-on of DVB-T2<\/a> (caused by an old argument over the set-top box standard<\/a>) has resulted in the current Minister saying that the analogue switch-off date may be delayed, meaning that the release of the digital dividend would be delayed in turn.<\/p>\n

\"DoC

Dina Pule flanked by Rosey Sekese (left) and Themba Phiri (right)<\/p><\/div>\n

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late<\/h3>\n

Although there seems to be some progress at the DoC and ICASA, given the history, it is understandable that yet another colloquium was treated with doubt.<\/p>\n

The unsatisfying feedback from the commissions, along with the fuzzy outcome of the indaba didn\u2019t help to lend the event credibility either.<\/p>\n

Phiri called it the \u201cbeginning of the beginning of a process\u201d, while director-general of the DoC, Rosey Sekese laid out the plan of action:<\/p>\n