A number of well-known organisations have come up with an excellent idea. In principle.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), along with South Africa Connect, Sangonet and The Shuttleworth Foundation, will convene a forum in Johannesburg on 24 March that aims to cobble together a national broadband strategy, for presentation to the government that will take office after the April elections.
It will bring together a spread of interest groups, as wide-ranging as Internet service providers, communications workers, content providers, education groups and academics, civil society organisations, alternative energy experts and consumer groups, to "identify the key components of a national broadband strategy, which will be consolidated into a framework to be presented to the new government".
Botched attempt
The thought is admirable. It is true that Poison Ivy's policy (and those of Jay Naidoo and Pallo Jordan before her) was insufficiently informed by stakeholders, and that they failed miserably both in improving access to communications to under-serviced areas, and mirroring the rapid cost reduction that almost every country except ours has enjoyed. The only relative successes were thanks to the extent to which certain sectors, such as cellular telephony, were less burdened with policy, bureaucracy and regulation.
In a statement quoted on ITWeb, the APC's William Currie, a fierce critic of past policy errors, says managed liberalisation is the root of the problem - its failure evident in the lack of competition and high prices of broadband in the country.
He said: "The new government should develop a simple set of principles for a national broadband strategy and use them to amend the Electronic Communications Act," adding: "There is no need for any grand policies - a coherent national broadband strategy will suffice - and government can concentrate on enabling the emergence of a fully competitive sector to expand affordable broadband access for all citizens."
This goes to the core of the issue, really. In the past, there was too much regulation. As I argued in a previous column, 'After Poison Ivy', one of the two key policy changes I'd like to see under a new government is the removal of the limit on the number of licences in issue. (The other is making spectrum tradeable.)
Give blessing
Permit anyone to compete, permit new competitors to arise if and when they see gaps in the market, and permit that competition or that threat of competition to bring pressure to bear on existing operators to roll out services, reduce prices and improve quality. If new competition cannot arise, there is much less reason for an existing cartel to enter into price competition, or to rapidly corner poorer or rural areas, for example.
If new competition cannot arise, there is much less reason for an existing cartel to enter into price competition, or to rapidly corner poorer or rural areas.
Ivo Vegter, ITWeb contributor
There is plenty anecdotal evidence to show that given free competition, this will happen. Enough companies have tried to find loopholes in our restrictive licensing regime to try to deliver services where existing operators didn't, or wouldn't, offer them. By contrast, in markets where a limited number of licences were issued to government-picked favourites - such as pay-TV - we have only seen failure.
Despite the ostensible aim the APC's conference has of developing a national broadband strategy, what it should produce is as little "national" strategy as possible.
The wide range of stakeholders it hopes will contribute makes this unlikely. There are too many special interests among them who either still believe it is government's role to invest in infrastructure and stimulate economic development, or who would hide appeals for preferential treatment of their organisations or pet causes behind such lofty sentiments.
And even if it does produce a strategy to recommend to government, experience has shown that our politicians are unlikely to respond. When the original Telecommunications Act was written - the one that gave Telkom a five-year exclusivity period and started South Africa on its long slide into the lower ranks of the global information society - a great deal of public comment was solicited by the government's Green (discussion) Paper. Much of it went mysteriously missing between consecutive drafts of the resulting White (policy) Paper.
The aims for a national broadband strategy forum are admirable, and the intention is worthy. But even if there is sufficient impatience with "managed liberalisation" to recommend the unqualified liberalisation that our market has needed for so long, it would be surprising if our politicians are prepared to admit their party got it so wrong for so long.
How do you explain to a policy-maker that the best policy is as little policy as possible?
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