MONDAY, 10.30AM
The dispute between SA’s internet service providers (ISPs) and parastatal telecoms corporation Telkom over Telkom’s claimed monopoly on internet services heated up last week when private operators complained to the industry regulator that Telkom is not supplying them with international bandwidth.
In the latest skirmish in an unresolved battle over Telkom’s claim that basic internet service provision is its exclusive domain in terms of a statutory five-year monopoly on voice services, the Internet Service Providers’ Association last week made an urgent application to the SA Telecommunications Regulatory Authority over Telkom’s refusal to supply international internet capacity to all ISPs.
THE ISPs said they received notification from Telkom on Thursday that all badwidth applications had been put on hold pending resolution of the monopoly dispute by Satra. ISPA maintains this flies in the face of Satra’s ruling in June that the dispute would take several months to resolve and that Telkom should not claim a monopoly on basic internet services in the meantime.
ISPA co-chairman David Frankel said it should fall to Satra, and not Telkom, to decide whether ISPs can buy bandwidth.