As we enter round two of the drawn-out process that will hopefully eventually see SA acquire a second national telecoms operator (SNO), certain nasty issues raise their ugly little heads.
Already the process has taken far longer than was originally intended - Telkom officially stopped being a monopoly in May last year, and the deadline for bids for the SNO licence was supposed to be August 2002.
The problem, of course, is that up to now, absolutely nothing has gone according to plan in the SNO process.
Rodney Weidemann, Journalist, ITWeb
Of course, the deadline was extended when no bids from major foreign consortiums were forthcoming, although even then, the two bids that were finally submitted were entered at the eleventh hour and were eventually both rejected by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA).
So instead of having the SNO licensed and set to go by the end of March this year, we instead saw the Department of Communications launching another round of bidding for the licence, with less stringent conditions than were required the first time.
Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri also set out new conditions for approving the bidders.
Firstly, interested parties (if there are any) will have to "express interest" in bidding, by supplying details of issues such as their ability to raise funds, ownership structure, technical capabilities, current market positioning, important business partners and its social responsibility programme.
This will be followed by one-on-one negotiations with an SNO working committee, which has been appointed by the minister. The committee will then recommend consortiums to ICASA for evaluation, and the regulator will then make a recommendation to the minister regarding who should be awarded the licence.
In other words, the regulator has been given a definite role to play in the SNO process, despite the fears that were initially raised when the minister announced that her department would take over the second round of evaluation, excluding ICASA.
Her announcement came after ICASA had turned down the two original bids for the licence and was seen by many as a blow to the regulator`s independence and credibility, and as a way of pushing ICASA out of the evaluation process.
What is ICASA`s real role?
The deadline for a decision on the awarding of the SNO licence is expected by the end of June, assuming all goes according to plan. The problem, of course, is that up to now, absolutely nothing has gone according to plan in the SNO process.
Apart from that, it seems to me as though ICASA may well have only been brought into this process as a rubberstamp for the communication department`s preferred bidder.
Let`s look at the facts.
Assuming that there are any worthwhile bids tendered in the first place, the SNO working committee - appointed by the minister - will make its recommendations to ICASA, which is then expected to evaluate and make its own recommendations to the minister.
But what happens if the SNO committee accepts only one of the consortiums for recommendation to ICASA?
The regulator will find itself trapped between a rock and a hard place, as it will undoubtedly be seen as the "bad guy" (as it was in some quarters after rejecting the two initial SNO bids) should it reject the recommended bid.
However valid ICASA`s reasons may be for doing this, it will inevitably be seen as the cause behind the SNO process once again being delayed.
More to the point, should the bidder be recommended to the minister purely because it is the only potential candidate, surely this means that ICASA has no real teeth or say in the process, and is only there to rubberstamp the issue?
In other words, the regulator may well find itself in a no-win situation in terms of the SNO process, and one can`t help but wonder if this is not some form of subtle manipulation of the overall process by the communications department.
Time will tell, of course, and we will have to wait and see how many bidders are recommended to ICASA for consideration - but if only one is put forward, I for one will be more than a little suspicious.
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