Skepticism over EC Act

In response to the President`s signing of the Electronic Communications Act (EC Act) last week, a variety of stakeholders have indicated that the actual implementation of the Act remains rather uncertain. Storm, MTN, Cell C, Communications Users Association of South Africa, MyADSL and Gateway Communications all wish the EC Act would be implemented soon.

The Department of Communications tells us the president needs to make a proclamation before the Act becomes effective, but it seems most industry players are more interested in when ICASA begins implementing the Act.

The ITWeb newsroom at the end of last week and the beginning of this one was bombarded with a flurry of calls from the State IT Agency (SITA), which is adamant that the COO Noedine Isaacs-Mpulo was 100% incorrect in her identification of five key private sector partners.

The president needs to make a proclamation before the Act becomes effective, but it seems most industry players are more interested in when ICASA begins implementing the Act.

Dave Glazier, junior journalist, ITWeb

Seeking to clear up the mess made by his exec, CEO Mavuso Msimang clarified matters late on Friday. While people were wondering why those five companies were mentioned in the first place, we brought details of SITA`s multimillion-rand deal with Belgian IT group CIPAL. Speculation might continue for a while, but one thing I don`t think we will see from SITA in the near future is slips of the tongue like this one.

Predictably, the Telkom-Communications Workers Union (CWU) debacle continued this week, as ITWeb reported on Tuesday that talks have once again resumed to try to resolve the deadlock over the company`s wage offer and profit-sharing schemes.

The next day, we brought news that CWU has finally reached a wage agreement with Telkom. Details of who bowed to who should emerge in the near future; but it looks like the striking, marching, allegedly-vandalising employees of the fixed-line operator will finally go back to work.

On Tuesday we heard that the Black IT Forum (BITF) is on the verge of collapsing. One of its few remaining members cites lack of communication between leaders and members, and negative media reports as causing the crisis. There was a time when the BITF had about 3 000 members, today there`s only around 50. None of this bodes well for the continued transformation of the IT sector to become more equitable.

Wednesday brought news that Mozambique has won the race to bring WiMax technology to Africa, with Rapid Cloud Technology`s deployment of a fully certified network in Maputo, in less than five days. Though one ITWeb reader pointed out that Uganda has had a WiMax network installed since December, a quick search on the Web does not reveal any mention of this.