The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) has suggested a possible alternative for dealing with licence fee recovery amid a steep payment shortfall by debtors, in particular the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).
This comes after it came to light in December that the authority was still owed over R210 million in outstanding licence fees, with state security entities the SANDF and South African Police Service (SAPS) holding the highest unpaid bills.
Speaking at last week's Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications hearings, ICASA CEO Pakamile Pongwana said the authority would look into alternatives in dealing with outstanding debt - an issue that has long plagued the body and is largely due to capacity constraints.
Pongwana suggested the authority come up with a different means of charging non-commercial entities - specifically the state-owned bodies that do not use spectrum for profit, but for security. The regulator head feels there is a need for a charging method that covers the costs of ensuring there is no interference with state security signals.
While the SAPS paid its account in full in December, an amount of R182 375 359 is still owed by SA's defence force.
Democratic Alliance shadow minister of communications Marian Shinn points out that money SANDF owes ICASA will be paid by National Treasury to the SANDF - which will then pay it to ICASA, which will pay it back to Treasury.
ICASA spokesperson Paseka Maleka says the alternative means of charging licence fees is, for now, just a proposal and concrete changes in this regard are not in the authority's hands. "Obviously, there will be a need to look at how other countries deal with such situations where a government entity uses spectrum for security purposes. However, the decision in that regard falls within the ambits of the National Treasury and Department of Communications (DOC)."
New leadership
Having taken the CEO role just over three months ago, Pongwana vowed to crack down on the issues facing SA's ICT regulator, noting he only had three years to restructure ICASA.
Prior to heading ICASA, Pongwana was head of regulatory affairs at Vodacom. He replaced Themba Dlamini when his tenure ended in October.
In an interview with ITWeb at the end of his first month at ICASA, Pongwana said the regulator had not delivered a good performance overall in the 2012/13 financial year.
A month before he stepped up to the top post, ICASA's failure to curb fruitless and wasteful expenditure, missed targets, and under-spending drew the ire of Parliamentary Portfolio Committee members, who accused the authority of lagging behind other African authorities.
In November, Pongwana said ICASA had a tendency to overextend itself. He also pointed out that a number of the authority's targets were dependent on its parent government body the DOC, which had had to set regulatory processes in place before it could move ahead.
Top priority and pain on ICASA's plate right now is in the battle it is embroiled in over the new mobile termination rates structure it proposed at the end of the last month, which last week saw second operator MTN serving High Court papers on the authority.
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