Local Loop

According to the Broadband Infraco act, the new state-owned-enterprise is supposed to be issued both IECS and IECNS licenses (what I like to call the happy-meal license combo), enabling them to provide retail and wholesale services, respectively. The act mandates Infraco to drastically lower the price of national backbone bandwidth.

It seems I was overly optimistic about the conclusion of Broadband Infraco’s licensing when I blogged about it back in March this year. The process is stalled in a dispute:

During the regulator’s public hearings, ISPA (among others) objected to the issuing of the IECS license, due to fears that Infraco will turn into another anti-competitive vertically-integrated government telco. I agree, that wouldn’t be good for the country.

On the other hand, ISPA’s members now have their own happy-meal licenses, enabling then to operate national networks. This they couldn’t do before, but the problem is, they don’t have national networks. Instead, they want to restrict market access of the only organization (other than Telkom) that has a national network, to themselves. As middle-men this would guarantee them fat profit margins, and it would not guarantee the intended outcome of cheaper telecoms for the rest of us.

So how about a compromise: ICASA issues Broadband Infraco an IECS license with a condition that permits them to provide optical transport services to everyone (including the retail market), but no higher level (IP transit) services. ISPA can’t object, because they’re supposed to represent Internet Service Providers.