It would be nice to believe that minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri will license the second national operator (SNO) on 17 September, as she claims she will.
Except that those of us who have followed the process for some time now are well aware that the SNO should have been licensed in May 2002, and after nearly two-and-a-half years of delay, are wary of anything our esteemed minister says.
The announcement of the date on which she will grant the licence has generally been seen as a good thing, except there are several problems with this.
One key issue is that there is still no majority shareholder in the SNO. The 51% majority shareholding of Sepco - which itself will hold 51% of the SNO's shares - remains to be awarded.
Rumour has it that Matsepe-Casaburri is hoping to find a financial institution of some kind to take up the remaining shareholding in the SNO and, since it will be a majority shareholding, also lead the entity.
Except that the idea of a financial institution, which has no experience in the telecoms game, running the SNO is almost as ridiculous as the idea of a minister with no telecoms experience running the communication ministry.
Reaching agreement
A further problem with the SNO lies in the details of the minister's statement that she will award the licence on 17 September.
Perhaps it is just me, but I am sensing that Matsepe-Casaburri is putting herself in a position where she can blame someone else for the SNO's impending failure.
Rodney Weidemann, journalist, ITWeb
Matsepe-Casaburri will award the licence subject to a business plan being submitted by the consortium members, which entails all parties involved in the SNO consortium reaching some kind of agreement.
Sounds simple enough, except that they have been striving for months already to reach "some kind of agreement", only for infighting to prevent this.
Empowerment partner Nexus Connexion still has the option of asking for a judicial review to the process that saw the minister grant a reduced percentage of the original 51% strategic equity to rival bidders CommuniTel and Two Consortium.
Should the judicial review be called for (an announcement on this issue is due this week from the Nexus lawyers) there will be no licence granted on the 17th.
More importantly, perhaps, should the SNO not be able to produce a viable business plan by that date, there will also be no licence awarded.
Asking the impossible
Perhaps it is just me, but I am sensing that Matsepe-Casaburri - who is undoubtedly under immense pressure from within government to sort the SNO issue out - is putting herself in a position where she can blame someone else for the SNO's impending failure.
She has instituted a time frame which cannot possibly be met, is asking the impossible of the various members of the SNO and is then going to turn around, much like Pontius Pilate, and wash her hands of the entire debacle, saying: "It's not MY fault."
Matsepe-Casaburri will be able to point to the fact that it is the feuding SNO members that have failed to come up with the requisite plans and agreements; that she was prepared to license the entity, but that the players let her down.
Except that we have known the minister's ways for too long, and will not be fooled by this. Her ineptitude is the real reason we still have no valid competition for Telkom, years after we were supposed to.
Her failure to be strong and decisive when the telecommunications industry required it has seen the SNO process lurch from debacle to increasingly ridiculous debacle.
It is high time the minister was held accountable for all the misdeeds and mismanagement that have taken place under her reign.
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