Minister seeks to restrict Broadband Infraco to an ECNS licence
The political wrangling over the future role of Broadband Infraco – the State-owned Entity (SoE) set up to faciliate the lowering of the costs of communication in South Africa – continues apace. The Minister of Communication has acted quickly on his statement to Parliament that Infraco should not have an ECS licence by publishing draft amendments to the Policy Direction issued by the previous minister as regards the licensing of the entity.
Draft Amendment of the Policy Direction on the Licensing of Broadband Infraco 20091013
The proposed amendments are open for comment until 24 November 2009.
If you want to look at the original policy direction and the history of this matter – http://www.ellipsis.co.za/index.php?s=Infraco.
comment: hard not to have a quiet giggle really – electronic communications in SA is certainly rapidly taking on soap opera characteristics. The net effect of the proposed amendments is to take away the ability of Infraco to compete with other service providers in the retail market – they will be restricted to making capacity available on their network for other licensees to use. It will, in other words, have no direct dealings with the public.
This is probably the right result. No doubt there are some extremely unhappy faces in the Infraco boardroom and rumours of an attempt to fight the DoC on this one are beginning to surface. Meanwhile, nearly 3 years after it was initially mooted, the new SoE still does not have any licensing.
Pass the popcorn please.
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