Members of Parliament and the Department of Communications have rejected suggestions that the Convergence Bill should be redrafted.
This emerged yesterday during the sixth day of hearings on the Convergence Bill before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications.
Sharad Abhyankar, legal counsel for Indian telecommunications company VNSL, told the committee that foreign investors require legislative certainty and a policy that allows them to plan ahead.
"While it is not my place to criticise the South African legislative process, we have been concerned about the lack of transparency in the process, such as there being no green and white papers and the overall lack of policy direction," Abhyankar said.
VNSL, part of India`s Tata group of companies, has taken the 26% share in the second national operator (SNO), which has completed its business plan and is finalising a shareholders` agreement.
During the SNO`s presentation, Karl Socikwa, Transtel CEO, said the absence of a policy framework means that many complex policy issues underlying convergence regulation remain "unventilated".
"The unresolved policy issues cannot simply be fixed by better drafting and needs to be underpinned by a policy foundation," he says.
Socikwa recommended that a comprehensive policy framework be put into place before the Bill is finalised.
His recommendations were supported by the SA Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE), which attacked the Bill for having "no vision" or "clarity of guiding principles".
Redraft recommended
SAIEE fellow Neel Smuts, a former Independent Communications Authority of SA councillor and former Sentech CEO, said his organisation was ready to help with a redrafting process.
However, the possibility of a redraft of the Bill was rejected by portfolio committee whip Godfrey Kekana of the ANC, who said the Department of Communications had the capacity to make "whatever changes were necessary and that the Bill had to be finalised by the end of August".
Joe Mjwara, the department`s deputy director-general for policy, said industry already had a year following the Convergence Colloquium in 2003 to participate in drafting the Bill. He said any suggestion of putting it on hold now "was not feasible".
Telkom also presented a verbal version of its submission, where it bemoaned the fact that definitions in the Convergence Bill and the current Telecommunications Act were confusing and imprecise, which led to legal wrangles.
"We have had a number of legal battles with VANS [value-added network service providers], because of the lack of clarity in the definitions. It is not that we want to put them out of business, but they are doing things that they interpret they can do, while we do not see it as such," said Gabriele Celli, Telkom`s executive of regulatory affairs and public policy.
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