Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri is to seek cabinet approval for the new telecommunications policy aimed at liberalising the local market after Telkom`s exclusivity ends in 2002 or 2003.
The communications ministry says Matsepe-Casaburri will reveal details of the policy after a meeting scheduled for this afternoon, and that the self-imposed deadline to finalise amendments to the Telecommunications Act by April will be adhered to.
"The minister will outline the actual policy issues and will indicate how the process will be concluded," says department spokesman Robert Nkuna.
The cabinet meeting follows a hastily assembled colloquium called by the department in early February to allow stakeholders and industry to give input into the direction the new policy should take. Although representatives at the meeting varied greatly in their preferred approach to telecoms competition, industry watchers generally expect the government to adopt a gradual liberalisation process.
By law, new policy directives must be published in the Government Gazette for 30 days of public comment before being finalised.
Industry players such as M-Cell and Eskom Enterprises, which have expressed interest in bidding for a licence to compete with Telkom, are on record as saying a new fixed-line network operator would need at least 12 months to plan its business and roll-out a network before starting operations. Should Telkom choose not to apply for an optional extension of its exclusivity period, such competitors could be expected to be online by May next year.
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