{"id":552275,"date":"2007-05-15T17:38:40","date_gmt":"2007-05-15T17:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/552275-sa-needs-more-telecom-liberalisation.html"},"modified":"2007-05-15T17:38:40","modified_gmt":"2007-05-15T17:38:40","slug":"sa-needs-more-telecom-liberalisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/552275-sa-needs-more-telecom-liberalisation.html","title":{"rendered":"SA needs more telecom liberalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

"The government needs to shift away from its established managed-liberalisation strategy, which has yet to achieve its policy objectives for the industry," said Raymond Hill, head of emerging markets and South African corporates at Fitch. "The telecommunications industry needs to see reduced state economic participation in terms of ownership." <\/p>\n

Fitch added that provisions of the recent Electronic Communications Act of 2005 offer a better platform for market reform. <\/p>\n

"Legally speaking, it has served to further empower Icasa, the telecom regulator. However, the regulator remains under-resourced, and as such many of the regulatory instruments that might be available to encourage further liberalisation may not be effectively implemented. <\/p>\n

"New entrants such as both value-added network services operator licensees and under-serviced area licences licensees have to date made limited progress, and Cell C, the third licensed mobile operator, has arguably underperformed since launch as a result of the unfavourable regulatory environment." <\/p>\n

Fitch said that the fixed-line market remains an effective monopoly for Telkom, and the mobile market is an effective duopoly for Vodacom (constituting 50% Telkom and 50% Vodafone) and number-two operator MTN.<\/p>\n

"The established fixed-line and mobile operators’ South African businesses remain strongly cash generative, and without a strong regulator pushing for further market liberalisation, these cash flows would appear to be under little threat in the near term. <\/p>\n

"Although operators will continue to invest in their broadband offerings, Fitch believes that increased competition would lead to even greater investment for the overall telecommunications industry," the report concluded.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday that the South African telecommunications industry would benefit from a more competitive market-driven approach to development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}