SA's telecommunications costs are far too high and are impacting the country's economy, says Sentech COO Gladwyn Marumo.
He was speaking today before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications on the second day of public hearings into the draft Convergence Bill.
"Network carriers charge Joe Soap - the ordinary citizen and consumer - high fees and then call it success," Marumo said.
Due to confusion surrounding the telecommunications policy and regulatory framework, there is now a huge amount of grey data being carried on the Sentech and Telkom networks, he said.
"It is almost impossible to quantify the value of this grey data being carried but I estimate it to be in the hundreds of millions of rands. The result of this is that the country loses out on revenue as these grey data operators do not necessarily pay tax," said Marumo.
Sentech said in its presentation that everything hinges on the regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA). Marumo said ICASA's funding is also directly tied to its ability to function and its independence. He added that ICASA's funding must take into account its ability to attract and retain the necessary skilled people to carry out its functions.
Regarding the role of the minister of communications, Sentech said the focus should be on general policy, setting the framework for individual licence applications, and the determination of radio frequency spectrum policy.
Marumo also believes that SA must develop a convergence policy and laws catering to its unique requirements.
"While this county does import technology, there is no need for it to import laws from other countries."
Marumo was referring to the fact that the last sections of the draft Convergence Bill, particularly licensing, were copied from the Malaysian and Indian equivalents.
Following his presentation, Marumo told ITWeb that Sentech, if given a licence to carry voice traffic, would start building its own backbone networks in areas where it proved commercially viable, or would reach similar facilities from other infrastructure players.
Janet MacKenzie, a lawyer with Sentech's legal advisors Cliff, Dekker and Todd, says the draft Convergence Bill does not allow for true convergence. "In a true convergence environment, broadcasting would be treated as just another service and there would only be two classes of licences, namely infrastructure and service providers."
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