South African telecommunications policy has been a "bad mistake" for 13 years, public enterprises minister Alec Erwin and former communications minister Jay Naidoo admitted yesterday.
Erwin and Naidoo were participating in the World Economic Forum on Africa debate, entitled "Connecting Africa". The debate centred on what would be needed to overcome the continent's lagging behind other regions, such as Europe and Asia, in getting populations connected.
Naidoo, who was minister of broadcasting, telecommunications and posts from March 1996 to June 1999, said: "As a former minister of communications, I must admit that [telecommunications] policy has been a mistake. One of our biggest mistakes was to insist that Telkom roll out fixed lines. Not everyone wanted a fixed line."
He went on to say the service obligations imposed on mobile network operators Vodacom and MTN helped spur the development of the pay-as-you go concept.
The network operators say about 90% of their subscribers are on the prepaid system.
Core investment
Erwin partly agreed, by saying: "It had been a bad mistake not to invest in the basic core [meaning the core telecommunications network] as we need so much more capacity there."
He contended that government should have encouraged more investment in the telecommunications spine, or core network, and now the country was lagging in its broadband capacity for a number of large projects, such as the Square Kilometre Array [the proposed large array radio telescope that could be built in the Karoo], for academic research and the broadcasting needs of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
"What we need now is a gigantic leap forward," Erwin said.
Competition debate
According to Erwin, "market forces", meaning either the private sector or Telkom, were also to blame as they had not risen to the challenge of rolling out broadband capacity.
"The market invests for short-term profit and that is why it invested in VANS [value-added network services] and not the core network. What we need is high-quality fibre optic cables...we cannot afford to wait," he said.
Erwin's ministry, which oversees the Department of Public Enterprises, is setting up Infraco, a new state-owned company to supply broadband on a wholesale basis. The public hearings on the law that will govern Infraco will begin next week.
David Lewis, Competition Tribunal chairman, took issue with Erwin on the fact that "market forces" were not playing their part.
"The country's access deficit [meaning the lack of broadband connectivity] was not due to market forces not working, but due to the fact that we have not had a working market. If there is one market that responds to market incentives, it is the telecoms market," he said.
But Erwin responded that no market in Africa was "deep enough" to get proper market forces working, and that is why the continent needed a co-ordinated approach to getting connected.
Share