Essential facilities in spotlight

By Damaria Senne, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 20 Feb 2008

ICT stakeholders are to provide oral input to the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) on the draft regulations on essential facilities, on 6 and 7 March.

This is the last stage of the public consultation process before ICASA finalises regulations governing how communications providers are granted access to essential facilities such as co-location space, cable-landing stations, international gateways and undersea-based fibre optic cables.

An essential facility is defined as "an infrastructure which is necessary for reaching customers and enabling competitors to carry on their business, but whose duplication by competitors is impossible, or extremely difficult, due to physical, geographical, legal or economic constraints".

ICASA published the draft regulations related to this infrastructure in December last year, and subsequently called for written input from interested stakeholders.

The regulator received 17 written submissions, with 15 of these indicating they would also like to make oral submissions, says ICASA spokesman Sekgoela Sekgoela.

One of the major parties that will be heavily impacted by these regulations is fixed-line incumbent Telkom, which previously held a monopoly over undersea cable SAT-3, as well as the national backhaul infrastructure, among others.

Stakeholders expected to make oral submissions include Telkom, Neotel, MTN, Vodacom and Cell C, as well as Fastcomm, Transnet, MWeb, Gateway Communications and the Internet Service Providers Association of SA.

The draft regulations call for fair and non-discriminatory access to essential facilities, and for the party in control of access to negotiate in "good faith" with a person who requests access to the facility.

"The person in control of an essential facility must provide access to an essential facility pursuant to the same conditions and of the same quality as it provides itself, its subsidiaries, related parties or persons which possess a financial interest," the regulations state.