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South African ICT Sector Performance Review 2009/2010

Research ICT Africa fills a strategic gap in the development of a sustainable information society and network knowledge economy by building the ICT policy and regulatory research capacity needed to inform effective ICT governance in Africa. The network was launched with seed funding from the IDRC and seeks to extend its activities through national, regional and continental partnerships. The establishment of the Research ICT Africa (RIA) network emanates from the growing demand for data and analysis necessary for the appropriate and visionary policy required to catapult the continent into the information age. Through network development RIA seeks to build an African knowledge base in support of ICT policy and regulatory design processes, and to monitor and review policy and regulatory developments on the continent. The research arising from a public interest agenda is made available in the public domain, and individuals and entities from the public and private sector and civil society are encouraged to use it for teaching, further research or to enable them to participate more effectively in national, regional and global ICT policy formulation and governance. This research is made possible by the significant funding received from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ottawa, Canada. The network members express their gratitude to the IDRC for its support. The South African telecoms sector has been in flux over the last decade from a policy and regulatory perspective. Sub-optimal outcomes after the first phase of reform saw the partial privatisation of the incumbent and the entry of a third mobile operator. In the second phase another national fixed-line operator entered the market and the market was further liberalised through the enactment of the Electronic Communications Act in 2005. This was hailed as legislation that unshackled the market constraints and enabled the optimisation of a converged environment. But the anticipated opening up of the market has been hampered by a number of legal and regulatory bottlenecks. The Act placed an onerous administrative task on the regulator. This ranged from the conversion of existing licensees to the new horizontal licensing framework, to the coordination of market definition studies for the resulting new competitive market regulation. As a result, the period under review – 2008–2009 – has seen the telecoms industry in a state of stagnation, confusion and litigation. Following a ruling by the Pretoria High Court that former Value-Added Network Service (VANS) providers be allowed to self-provide their own networks instead …