Cables require local ownership

Johannesburg, 10 Sep 2007

South Africa will require that all undersea cables landing here be majority owned by South Africans, says communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

Speaking at the Southern African Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference (Satnac) 2007, in Mauritius, this morning, Matsepe-Casaburri said government was happy with indications that investors plan to land cables in the country.

However, she will soon announce landing guidelines that require all cables landing in SA be majority owned by South Africans, she said.

The guidelines will also be consistent with SA's foreign policy and take the security of the country, and the African continent, into consideration, she said.

"Every cable landing or leaving SA should incorporate in it the Nepad [New Partnership for Africa's Development] Broadband Infrastructure Network."

Security measures are important, given the state of our insecure world, she added.

Matsepe-Casaburri said she instructed Department of Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole to propose the landing guidelines to the Interim Inter-Governmental Assembly for discussion.

She also noted that her department studied the communications regulations of other countries when drafting the landing guidelines, ensuring they are consistent with international trends.

Determination expected

BMI-TechKnowledge senior analyst Richard Hurst says the implications of the ownership stipulations are that "those who do end up rolling out cables will have to do so via partnerships". He cites Seacom and Neotel's interaction as an example of this, where "Neotel basically controls the landing rights of Seacom in SA".

According to Hurst, "government is trying to hedge its bets", but the stipulations set out by the minister have generally been expected. He says South African companies should benefit from the directives, as should the consumer.

"It should open up access to those cables and bring prices down." He adds that, as the international community moves towards always-on broadband, SA will also increasingly need high-speed capacity.

He reiterates: "The more bandwidth we have, the better."

Investor support

Meanwhile, Matsepe-Casaburri said SA was convinced it was on the right path to break away from the Eassy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) cable project and support the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network, as well as initiating its own undersea cable systems.

She said there was strong support from potential investors in the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network. "Instead of people running away from us, we have a lot of support from investors."

SA and other African governments broke away from the Eassy project because larger operators taking part in the initiative bought such large quantities of capacity that there would never be fair access for smaller operators, she noted.

The project was not in line with the Nepad objective, which was to facilitate fair and open access for all telecoms providers to lower the cost of telecoms on the continent, she said. She noted that SA's Parliament had ratified the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network protocol.