SA`s regulatory environment is 'stifling`

Johannesburg, 16 Jul 2004

While the broadband market in Europe is growing at a phenomenal rate, it is a pity that SA`s stifling regulatory environment is preventing it from moving forward in a similar manner.

This is the view of Guillaume Humbert, sales programme director at Alcatel, who discussed the future development of broadband with journalists in Paris recently.

"We seek a world where everyone has access to broadband services, because broadband is changing the way we do things and thus forms the basis for a new market," he says.

"Broadband is actually fuelling the market in terms of the development of new devices, since Europe has now reached the stage where it is no longer mandatory for a user to have a PC in order to use DSL."

He says a key driver for broadband is the use of video over DSL, which - thanks to the proliferation of cable television and the like - has seen an enormous uptake in France.

"Currently, the biggest users of video over DSL are your PC users, but we are hoping to target television owners within the next year or so," says Humbert.

"Just because they don`t have a PC doesn`t mean they should be denied access to such services, and once we are able to bring video over DSL to TV owners, the next step will be to begin offering Web services such as e-mail to them."

He believes that once television users can gain access to Web services, it will mean the market will have grown to close to the 100% mark. "This will also drive competition and should lead to better pricing for such services."

Humbert says there is a lesson in this for SA.

"In France, competition in this environment led to a DSL price war, which saw the price of broadband access drop from around EUR45 per month to under EUR30 per month, which in turn led to a mass market uptake of the service, as it became affordable to everyone," he says.

"DSL is a booming and irreversible phenomenon, and as net services such as TV and video over DSL gain momentum, they are bringing telecoms and media actors closer to one another."