Never go to sleep during a politician's speech. You'll miss all the fun bits.
For example, when Rhadakrishna "Roy" Padayachie, the deputy minister of communications, announced the Department of Communications (DOC) had commissioned an internal study to benchmark the cost to communicate in SA with those in "peer countries", one might think it aimed to correct the misinformation spread by what it once called a "multimillionaire propaganda agency", the South Africa Foundation. Its 2005 study found that, whether compared to rich countries or peer countries, our telecommunications sucked.
But no. The DOC's study, conducted by BMI-TechKnowledge, found that, well, yes, we suck.
Padayachie began with the usual bromides, however, when he addressed ITWeb's annual Technology Roadmaps conference on 9 December. They could have been scripted by the minister herself. A neighbour passed me a note: "Poison Ivy stood on him."
Between the lines
I nodded, but didn't zone out. When he said: "This is a moment when the old is dying and the new is struggling to be born," he signalled a change in both tone and substance.
ITWeb journalist Candice Jones noticed this too, which led to a perceptive article, written with Paul Vecchiatto, reporting that Padayachie didn't exactly deny interest in the top job when the minister retires next year.
The club he used to beat those responsible for our failed policy of managed litigation, however, was the fun bit.
The South Africa Foundation's 2005 report, full of scathing conclusions about the price and availability of telecommunications, was wielded by the industry, the media and the political opposition with considerable force. But the blows fell on a defensive ministry, which brushed it off as knee-jerk obstructionism, not representative of the full reality and context of SA's developmental challenges, and making the typical mistake of comparing SA with rich countries instead of with peers of similar history, economy and geography.
The expectation, therefore, when Padayachie said the DOC had done its own study, was that it would amount to a whitewash. Surprisingly, asking obvious questions elicited obvious answers.
The peer-group comparison countries were Brazil, Chile, Korea, India and Malaysia, a selection that itself reflects a new outlook. Neither Chile's free-market history and consequent rapid economic development (even under former dictator Augusto Pinochet), nor Korea's high-density urban population would have passed muster for peer-group inclusion under the old guard.
Surprise, surprise
The club he [Rhadakrishna "Roy" Padayachie] used to beat those responsible for our failed policy of managed litigation, however, was the fun bit.
Ivo Vegter, Freelance journalist and columnist
The DOC's report found SA "has the least competitive mobile market based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index", a measure of market concentration commonly used in competition and anti-trust regulation.
It found SA "has exceptionally high telecommunications prices relative to its peer group countries and the smallest price reduction relative to its five comparator countries".
It found our mobile broadband prices are "relatively high", and with larger data packages "the two South African operators [Vodacom and MTN] are the most expensive in the group".
It found SA has the highest mobile penetration, and ranks second in prepaid mobile subscribers - an indication of the inadequacy of fixed-line alternatives - but that despite this, SA "has the lowest mobile voice usage rate among operators in benchmark countries, with less than 100 minutes per month per subscriber".
It found that "while all countries in the group, except India, have launched broadband 3G cellular networks, the penetration of 3G in SA is really not significant".
It found SA "is the second lowest ranked country" in terms of Internet access per 100 people, better than only India with its billion-plus population, and that its Internet penetration rate is "pretty much stagnant and the lowest in the group".
It found broadband penetration to be "considerably low as compared to its benchmark countries", and SA "has the second lowest international bandwidth" per capita - again second only to India, where the denominator is well over a billion.
It found that "it is the high cost of deploying new broadband infrastructure... that inhibit[s] private sector investment".
Stating the obvious
Among the recommendations were that tariff regulation be based on international benchmarks rather than costs, that Telkom should be (fully) privatised, that complicated legal procedures lead to substantial delays and should be avoided, and that high taxes and tariffs contribute to the high cost of telecommunications.
All this may sound obvious. It's not like these problems haven't been raised before by research companies, industry analysts, and the media.
However, to quote Padayachie: "The critical matter going forward is not to make the assumption that things ought to remain the same as they are... We need a radical break from the past, when the private sector was seen as an adversary... It is about time that we began a new dialogue to construct a better basis for this partnership so that we may work together in the challenges that are ahead of us... and [I] extend my invitation to one and all of you here to be part of this dialogue to construct a better basis in our partnership going forward."
That is the obvious solution to the obvious problems highlighted by the obvious answers the DOC got to obvious questions.
What SA needs is public recognition of these problems, acceptance of reasonable recommendations, and open dialogue about how to soothe the debilitating rash Poison Ivy left on our country. If that is how Padayachie proposes to run a DOC, were he "deployed to serve the people" in that capacity in 2009, he would deserve the full support of the ICT industry and its customers.
We can call him Jewelweed, our very own Indian Balsam.
Disclaimer: Ivo Vegter was the programme director of the Technology Roadmaps 2008 Conference.
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