Infraco open to other offers

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 30 Oct 2006

Anyone could become part of government`s proposed new broadband supplier Infraco, says Department of Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole.

Answering questions in Parliament on Friday, Shope-Mafole said government`s policy is that access to communications should be treated as a basic necessity, "similar to the way people have access to the public road network".

Shope-Mafole was speaking after her department presented its annual report to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, after which members asked a number of questions concerning the Department of Public Enterprises` (DPE`s) plans to start a new state-owned enterprise using the long distance assets of Transtel and Eskom.

Part of the plan would be for Infraco to lay its own submarine cable along the west coast that would rival Telkom`s SAT-3 cable.

"What we have to decide is if that cable should be 1TB to 6TB," Shope-Mafole said.

She added that the need for such a cable was dictated by the country`s expected surge in broadband capacity as part of its bid to host the square kilometre array radio telescope that SA is bidding for.

Dene Smuts, MP for the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, asked Shope-Mafole if this new proposal would create uncertainty for the telecommunications industry as a whole, especially after the drafting and promulgation of the Electronic Communications Act that laid the framework for liberalisation of the sector.

In government hands

Shope-Mafole replied that the DPE had looked at the fact that Neotel (the second national operator) would own the cable that was laid along the country`s railway infrastructure and the department wanted to find a way of keeping that cable in government hands, "without the SNO feeling cheated".

She said Neotel`s major shareholder VSNL was amenable to the new deal because it still guaranteed it right of way without actually having to own the infrastructure.

Shope-Mafole noted that the R627 million, allocated for Infraco by finance minister Trevor Manuel in his budget speech last week, was to light up the dormant Transtel and Eskom fibre and not for the laying of the cable.

As far as the licensing of Infraco was concerned, Shope-Mafole said amending Neotel`s current licence conditions could do this, but that a public process would probably have to be convened, which means other people could apply to be involved as well.

Shope-Mafole said the DPE had spearheaded the discussions on Infraco and her department had only been involved in the policy discussions part of the process.

The Independent Communications Authority of SA says it has not yet received an application from Neotel for an amendment of its licence.