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ICASA still fuzzy, one year on

Bonnie Tubbs
By Bonnie Tubbs, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 27 May 2015
Blurred lines caused by the dislodging of ICASA from the former communications department are still fuzzy, a year down the line.
Blurred lines caused by the dislodging of ICASA from the former communications department are still fuzzy, a year down the line.

One year down the line from president Jacob Zuma's decision to split SA's telecoms ministry and place the regulator under a new government communications department, the lines the move blurred are no clearer than they were last May.

This is according to industry watchers, who remain critical of the severance of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) from telecoms, as well as the leader appointed to oversee it, Faith Muthambi.

On 25 May last year, Zuma said the newly established communications ministry, under which ICASA now falls, would be responsible for overarching communication policy and strategy, information dissemination and publicity, as well as the branding of the country abroad. Critics have labelled it the "department of propaganda".

Compound challenges

Questionable council moves, infighting and a general sense of confusion are all problems industry watchers have said compound ICASA's already restricted muscle, which has been attributed to a lack of resources and independence. The regulator itself has cited a lack of resources as one of its primary challenges.

Shadow minister of communications at the Democratic Alliance, Gavin Davis, says ICASA still misunderstands its role, "believing it must account to the minister when it is actually a Chapter Nine institution. It also remains underfunded and underskilled."

Muthambi, he says, has not done anything in her one-year tenure so far to improve ICASA. "[Placing ICASA under the Department of Communications (DOC)] was a terrible decision. For one thing, much of its work deals with telecoms, which creates confusion.

"For another thing, it is not ideal for ICASA to fall under the same minister that deals with the SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] since ICASA is supposed to regulate the SABC."

BMI-TechKnowledge director Denis Smit says ICASA was "caught by surprise" by the splitting of the ministries and is still catching up. "It is really too early to review performance at this stage. ICASA has been more active and effective the last while in a number of areas as compared to the past but this is more due to them slowly getting their act together rather than ministerial changes."

Blurred lines

Ovum telecoms analyst Richard Hurst says, while the main reporting lines with regard to ICASA may have been cleared up, "on the surface, confusion still reigns as to what do about certain issues that fall within the ambit of the Department of Telecoms and Postal Services".

Hurst says the departmental split a year ago has "just created confusion" - not only in ICASA, but across the industry, which should be moving towards a more converged environment. "In addition, the DOC appears to be more concerned with communication or, perhaps more succinctly, propaganda, and we need to have a policy-maker more focused on enabling South Africans to have access to ICT and a regulator that is empowered to do so."

The dividing line, says ICT expert Adrian Schofield, should be the delivery of infrastructure and technical services on the one side and the management of content on the other. "The former is about enabling the citizens of SA to utilise technology to create economic value [and] the latter is about the government playing nanny to ensure we are not exposed to any information that might be harmful."

Weak leadership and a lack of resources, he adds, are major issues that Muthambi has not resolved. "Weak, ineffective state institutions not only drag the country's economic growth down but also leave the doors open for increased levels of corruption."

Apart from ICASA and the SABC, Muthambi's DOC also handles Government Communication and Information Systems, Brand SA and the Media Development and Diversity Agency.

While the passing of a year should bring with it some clarification around Zuma's May 2014 decision, Hurst says SA can expect more confusion to reign. "All that has been done is a patch solution, which will only stand for so long and will not pass a stress test."

In the end, he says, it is likely to be ICASA that is left trapped in the middle.

ICASA had not commented by the time of publication.

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