'Big Bang' liberalisation of South Africa Telecoms

andyr writes "Big news in South Africa is the (long-overdue) liberalisation of the telecoms environment, wresting wireless communications and cross-provider interconnects away from the monopoly wireline provider Telkom. The unexpected announcement from Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri caught industry by suprise, and Telkoms stock dropped by several percentage points."

Comments

Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

How singular. Oh, and FP.

Telephone Nirvana?

[rueger]

I hope that our African correspondents don't think that deregulation of telephone service won't have problems.

I recall a move to Virginia a few years back which left us without long distance service for three weeks while Verizon and Working Assets blamed each other for the inability to make the connection work. Nine exceedingly long phone calls - two of them with Verizon and Working Assets drones conferenced - and several letters were needed before these boobs figured out how things should world.

A monopoly at least offers the chance to know who is screwing you. When you rely on several companies (none of whom in North America usually give a damn about customer satisfaction) to make their competing systems compatible you're often walking into a minefield.

Dilemma for South African Government

[andyr]

When Telkom were given another five years of monopoly seven years ago, I thought it was too long. The Second network operator has been a long time coming, and is not here yet.

Telkom has the South african government as a majority shareholder.

In return for a promised rollout of connectivity to rural areas, Telkom were allowed a monopoly of provider interconnect, international connectivity, and wireless (wireless -across property boundaries or a road, not office 802.11B)

Naturally, this artificially inflates Telkom's value, and the anticipated return of a de-regulation stock sale.

To the Government's credit, and ICASA they have acted in the interests of the South African consumer and liberalised the environment before de-regulation.

Cheers, Andy!

http://wizzy.org.za/