Eassy faces political debate

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 15 Jun 2007

The South African Cabinet this week approved the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network (NBIN) protocol, dealing with the laying of a fibre optic network for southern and eastern Africa, to go before Parliament for ratification.

According to Thursday's Cabinet statement, this protocol will, among other things, seek to harmonise national and regional policies and regulations; ensure non-discriminatory open access to the terrestrial, as well as the submarine networks; facilitate African ownership and governance of the network; and provide for the creation of the special purpose vehicle that will own, develop, operate and maintain the network.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications held an informal discussion on the protocol with Department of Communications officials, including department director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole, on Tuesday, and will begin officially discussing the issue from Tuesday, 19 June.

Shope-Mafole said yesterday she was confident Parliament would ratify the protocol due to its social and economic importance for the African continent.

NBIN includes the building of a terrestrial fibre optic link from SA, stretching up through the centre of the continent through Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, to terminate in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.

Criticism, uncertainty

It is unclear whether the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) is part of the Nepad project or a separate project altogether.

Suzanne Vos, a member of the communications committee and member of Parliament for the Inkatha Freedom Party, says that at the informal discussions, the department indicated that should the Eassy consortium not be part of the NBIN project, the cable would not be allowed to land in SA.

"The committee has been told by the department that it will prepare legal opinion relating to a competing cable and how it can be stopped from landing," she notes.

Telkom and a number of other South African network operators, including MTN, Neotel and Vodacom, signed an Eassy supply contract on 12 March with equipment manufacturer Lucent Alcatel. This contract was heavily criticised in Parliament by Shope-Mafole.

"One is now trying to understand what government's thinking is. It appears that Telkom and others have signed agreements that fall outside the Nepad protocol," Vos says.

Countries that have signed the NBIN/Eassy protocol are SA, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania, Mauritius, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar.