According to this article the connectivity powers that be in South Africa, ICASA have decided to charge providers of Wi-fi hotspots R1000 in licensing fees. It is absolutely ridiculous for the average coffee shop to have to pay an extra grand on top of their exorbitant ADSL fees. A service such as a hotspot suddenly goes from a nice value add to an unnecessary and excessive expense. I personally cannot stand ICASA and they are one of the major obstacles facing South Africa.
ICASA describes themselves as “the regulator for the South African communications sector, responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, postal and telecommunications services”. Bear in mind though that government owns part of Telkom and also bear in mind the government regulates how Telkom can price themselves. Can I smell a conflict on interests here?
The simple fact of the matter is that an entity like ICASA is not only holding our country back but their general corruption is basically introducing anti-competitive behavour into the country.
We spend so much on broadband already and it seems that ICASA wants our country to struggle even further by introducing any possibly tax they can think of. I hope with our recently changed government we can actually have a decent minister handling communications. I’m tired of hearing about ICASA protecting Telkom and their monopoly. We’re at least 5 years behind the rest of the world (if not more) in terms of connectivity and development. We have no major Internet startups in South Africa due to the innability for most people to get online.
Shame on you ICASA, get your act together!
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.
God, South Africa sucks. Why don’t you all just move to a real country?
I guess the real issue is a lack of US Citizenship.
That and the fact that the US economy is about to be worse than that of ours.