Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has hit back at Ugandan minister Alintuma Nsambu over his criticism that SA's government is too involved in the building of international cable. She implied that the Ugandan minister spoke out of ignorance.
Nsambu criticised SA's government for being too involved in the telecommunications sector during a question and answer session at Satcom 2008, held in Sandton last week.
The criticism stems from the fact that SA insists that all international cable projects that want to land in SA be 51% owned by Africans, a policy that participants at Satcom 2008 said would hinder deregulation and vigorous competition in the ICT sector.
SA was also criticised for government's direct ownership of telecoms infrastructure, including its decision to build an undersea cable through Infraco.
Speaking at the Nepad e-schools stakeholder conference yesterday, Matsepe-Casaburri defended SA's decision to build international cable, saying SA's communication prices were too high despite the fact that state-owned Telkom had been privatised.
She also noted cable landing rights cannot be left to the private sector, as it involves the security of a country.
Everywhere else in the world, this is the operative framework, she said, citing the US and India as examples.
"I guess the minister, from this landlocked country, may not know because they are landlocked, but the minister in his country who signed the protocol [Kigali protocol resulting in the $2 billion Uhurunet initiative] knows this," she said.
Matsepe-Casaburri added that building and licensing of Infraco as a state-owned supplier of broadband arose out of the need to meet SA's development needs.
The infrastructure is accessible on a non-discriminatory basis, and private sector investors will own the cables to which Infraco will link, she said. "I think we should see this in the context it was intended," she concluded.
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