The blind leading the stupid?

This week, ITWeb broke the story that a large part of the local loop unbundling (LLU) report had been plagiarised, much of it having been lifted from a 2001 European Commission document.

The LLU committee handed its recommendations on how the South African local loop should be unbundled to communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. The minister will use the report to set up policy that will guide the unbundling process.

The kicker is that the committee has acknowledged the case study material in the document was lifted in its entirety from the EU report, without assigning proper credit to the source.

So where does this leave the whole issue? Well, committee chairman Tshilidzi Marwala described this as a "minor" problem and said it does not undermine the report and the recommendations.

Marwala added the committee's widespread use of text from another report without giving credit to the original was simply an oversight, not plagiarism. "It was an honest mistake; one we fixed as soon as we were alerted."

Honestly, I suppose we'll have to take your word for it.

Neotel, the last great hope for the local telecoms sector, is finally showing signs of life.

Martin Czernowalow, news editor, ITWeb

Those of you who thought Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille was a deluded sock-smoker must be feeling rather daft now. Pat certainly had something going when she called for draconian censorship of the Internet.

According to changes made to the Film and Publications Act, any blog or other Internet or mobile content that contains visual presentations, descriptions or representations of sexual conduct, advocacy of hatred, incitement to violence or propaganda promoting war must be submitted for classification before publication. Or else.

Does this smack of the good ol' days, or what? This is all under the guise of protecting children and stomping out child pornography and such. Housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu (standing in for Matsepe-Casaburri) argued before Parliament that the law would now provide consumer advice to enable adults to make informed viewing, reading and gaming choices, both for themselves and for children in their care.

Sure, and what's the harm in government "helping" us make those choices? After all, during the Boerassic age, a similar strategy worked well to teach boys of my generation that women had stars in place of nipples. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that this was not really the case. But that's a story for another day. Bottom line is that all of this was done for our own good.

I guess everything comes around full circle. Remember the Group Areas Act? Remember the Suppression of Communism Act? Remember wagging fingers and the PW and Pik show?

Rock on the new and improved SA!

Neotel, the last great hope for the local telecoms sector, is finally showing signs of life. After a somewhat quiet start, where we actually wondered whether the second national operator was perhaps a non-starter, the company is awarding contracts left, right and centre.

On Wednesday, we reported that Spescom Telecommunications has secured a three-year contract to supply and service next-generation synchronous digital hierarchy transmission equipment to Neotel.

Recently, Neotel has awarded infrastructure contracts to Tellumat Radio Communications for microwave radio links to power its entire network; Nokia Siemens Networks for the IP core, IP network management system and metro dense wavelength division multiplexing components of the Neotel network; Motorola for the radio frequency planning for the CDMA and WiMax network; and Dimension Data and Cisco to provide the metro Ethernet portion.

So, perhaps things will now start to happen in this space.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) expects to license more underserviced area licensees within the next two weeks. This could be the end of a long journey for applicants that were provisionally granted licences to operate in underserviced areas.

But, this being ICASA, there is an element of the unknown here, of course. At this stage, it is unclear whether the new licences will be in line with the directives issued by the communications minister in her budget last month, or if the process of aligning the licences will come in later.

So perhaps this could be the start of a whole new journey for some. In August, the regulator granted licences to seven applicants; however, only three of the companies were issued with licences outright, without conditions.

ICASA also denied the nine months it took to finalise the process caused a delay. That's apart from the nine months it took to finalise the process.