Final interconnection regulations should be completed and in force by June 2010, ICASA committed to Parliament yesterday.
The regulations will determine how much the mobile network operators charge each other for terminating calls across networks.
This commitment follows a lengthy hearing by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications that almost culminated in the legislative micromanaging ICASA's programme for the year ahead.
The hearing was also characterised by ICASA's executive management contradicting what its councillors had to say about the complexity of the process to lower interconnection rates and regulate the industry.
The regulator committed, in Parliament, to ensuring a costing model is completed by 1 February, drafting regulations by 30 March, and holding public hearings on 17 May.
The discussion that followed the morning presentation centred on the use of Chapter 10 of the Electronic Communications Act (ECA), which lays out how the regulator can determine market domination in a sector, and the processes.
Initially, ICASA made a presentation on how it proposed to use processes outlined in Chapter 10 to come up with some form of draft legislation by March next year. However, the politicians rejected the process, describing it “as vague and complicated” and not having a rigid timeline whereby the regulator can be held accountable.
Not so bright
African National Congress (ANC) MP Johnny de Lange said: “I though I was quite a bright person, but after your presentation, I realise I must be really stupid. Surely, as ICASA, all you have to do is go to the network operators and ask them for their costs so that the level can be determined?”
Eric Kholwane (ANC) then asked the ICASA councillors: “And what if your process doesn't succeed? Do we fire you, or are you going to resign? We need timelines to hold you accountable.”
ICASA councillor Robert Nkuna replied that ICASA had 38 projects outstanding that it was working on and it had promulgated 14 sets of regulations during the past year. He also said ICASA was busy working out how different the various provisions in the ECA were from the defunct Telecommunications Act.
Marcia Socikwa, another councillor, pointed out the complexity of implementing Chapter 10 of the ECA.
“Chapter 10 is a difficult and complex set of regulations,” she said. “Personally, it took me, myself, some six months to learn it and to come to grips with it.”
Communications committee chairperson Ismail Vadi then tasked ICASA to come back later in the day with its timelines on how it would deal with the interconnection regulations.
Not difficult
During the afternoon session, when presenting the timelines, Pieter Grootes, ICASA senior manager for competition and markets, said: “Chapter 10 is not hard, it is not complicated, it is what it is. It is a matter of ICASA getting to grips with it and implementing it.”
Grootes said part of ICASA's problem was that in 2004 “...there was a policy 'flip-flop' as it moved from the Telecommunications Act to the ECA. This meant there was a new policy and the regulator had to relearn how it did things.”
After the meeting, Vadi told ITWeb that he remained hopeful there will be a reduction in interconnection rates before the Christmas holidays.
“The Department of Communications are running their process and something may come out of that as they hold discussions with the operators. However, the ICASA process is about regulations and regulating the industry. I am also hoping that any reduction in interconnection rates will translate into a reduction in the retail rate; however, the latter was not a focus of Parliament's hearings,” he said.
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