The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa recently informed all stakeholders and the media of its Cost to Communicate Programme that outlines all the projects that ICASA is currently undertaking to address the concerns raised by various parties including government about the high cost of communication in South Africa.
ICASA has since received a number of requests for extended timelines, in particular the Broadband Value Chain Study and Call Termination Market Review. The Authority has reviewed the requests and grants an extension to all licensees as follows:
1. Broadband Value Chain Study – 29 July 2013
2. Call Termination Market Review – 2 August 2013
At this stage, the Authority foresees no change in the deliverable timelines of these projects as presented on 7 June 2013.
ICASA has also amended the questionnaire on the Call Termination Market Review as follows:
a. Information relating to SMS (Section B: 2.3), data (Section B: 4.6) and international roaming (Section E: 1.2) are removed from the questionnaire.
b. Licensees are not obliged to complete Roaming Agreements (Section E: 1.2) of the questionnaire.
c. Licensees are also not obliged to complete CST Traffic and Outpayment (Section D: 2 & 3) of the questionnaire.
On the other hand, ICASA indicated that it would publish draft Local Loop Unbundling Regulations on the 16th of July 2013. The Authority will inform all stakeholders about the future publication date for these regulations in the next week since the conclusion of the drafting of these regulations is taking longer than anticipated.
