Another show-stopper from Ivy

The big news of the week was no doubt the budget vote speech delivered by communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri to Parliament yesterday. While the speech held much of the usual murmurings about bringing down telecoms costs and making the world a better place, some of the minister's comments floored industry observers.

For starters, Matsepe-Casaburri's secret weapon to shake things up in the telecoms sector was to call for local loop unbundling to be completed by November 2011. This, say some analysts, effectively extends Telkom's monopoly by almost four years.

Diabolical!

Contrary to expectation, Sentech did not get any money allocated for its R600 million nationwide wireless broadband network. The directive for this project was issued by Matsepe-Casaburri in her budget speech a year ago and, according to her department's strategy document, infrastructure deployment is to be in full swing by March next year. However, the government signal provider has been standing with its hand outstretched ever since, begging the state for funding.

In fact, there was no mention made of any funding in the speech whatsoever. I guess that's one way to save money.

Telkom is in no danger of closing down anytime soon. Matsepe-Casaburri has come to its rescue.

Martin Czernowalow, news editor, ITWeb

To backtrack slightly, on Monday, ITWeb pre-empted the announcement that SITA signed a contract with Neotel for the latter to deploy a R454 million next-generation network to replace the current government common core network (GCCN).

The actual announcement was made by public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi on Wednesday. This is said to be the biggest public sector NGN deployment in sub-Saharan Africa and will be built through a partnership with Neotel, Business Connexion (BCX) and Cisco.

This does, of course, mean Telkom will lose a chunk of its government revenue to Neotel. Not to worry though, Telkom is in no danger of closing down anytime soon. Matsepe-Casaburri has come to its rescue.

ITWeb also broke the news on Wednesday that BCX CEO Peter Watt has confirmed his resignation. While the news surprised analysts and industry commentators, the announcement that deputy CEO Benjamin Mophatlane will take over was even more unexpected.

Since Mophatlane was never seen as being in line for the top job, analysts reacted negatively to the news, questioning whether his age and experience will be enough to lead the company.

Only time will tell, but Watt says he has been grooming Mophatlane for years.

No, this was not an episode of the Beavis and Butthead show. It was Jeff Radebe and Mpumi Mpofu appearing before Parliament to face a grilling over eNatis.

ITWeb reported the transport minister and DG did some fancy dancing in front of the National Assembly's transport portfolio committee to assure MPs that all was well with the R408 million system.

The minister was smooth, saying: "eNatis has not been a failure at all."

Then, in an unparalleled stroke of absolute genius, Radebe told Parliament he had not read a damning auditor-general's report on eNatis, which was released at the end of last year. Who can blame him? I'm sure all those dry facts and figures make for some pretty boring reading.

Radebe then said scapegoat (or sacrificial lamb) Thabo Tsholetsane, chief executive of the Road Traffic Management Corporation, had the report all along, but did not share. This almost brings a tear to my eye.