“ISPA believes that the regulator needs ready access to information from all licensed players if it is to effectively regulate the industry,” said Dominic Cull, Regulatory Advisor to ISPA.
The Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) said that it will oppose any attempts by ICASA to take enforcement action against ISPA members for not commencing with these services.
“As such, we have urged all our members to comply with the request for information. However, we also believe that the ability of our members to exercise their rights and meet their obligations under their licences has been compromised by the regulator’s failure to finalise a number of key regulations”, added Cull.
ICASA has not finalized a framework for the assignment of licensed spectrum in the 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz radio frequency spectrum bands, needed for building wireless networks.
Without spectrum, ISPs can’t even plan the building of their networks – never mind actually commence the provision of ECNS”, explained Cull.
Also, ISPA argues that there are no final regulations for interconnections in place, facilities leasing, spectrum pricing or carrier selection. The new regulations were intended to be in place in July 2008, before licence conversion took place.
“We suggest that ICASA instead revisits the issue of commencement of services once the core elements of the ECA regulatory framework are in place and a healthy, competitive electronic communications industry exists”, ended Cull.
