Johannesburg | Tuesday
SOUTH AFRICA will become a major player in the telecommunications age when the second network operator (SNO) is up and running, a Tradek economist said on Tuesday.
Mike Schussler, responding to the announcement of the seven black-owned businesses that would bid for the licence, said the current fixed line operator Telkom urgently needed competition.
”I think the SNO will provide a quality service and will finally elevate South Africa to the information age,” Schussler said.
”What the country needs is an operator that can grow and the faster one gets going, the better.”
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) announced on Monday that ten applications were delivered to them from black-owned companies in response to their Invitation to Apply (ITA) for a 19% stake in the operator.
Out of the ten applications delivered to the authority three applications were disqualified for failing to meet the requirements of the ITA.
The successful applicants were Gondwana Telecommunications, Nexus Connexion, Aruna Telecoms, Umsingizane Ozi Thingo, Onetel, Buatel and Reliance Networks.
The SNO is expected to be licensed by around October.
Icasa’s project manager of the SNO licensing, Siyabonga Madyibi, said the process involved three phases.
The first was the licensing of a black-run business for 19% of the new operator, the second was the bid by a foreign operator for a 51% share in the SNO and, finally, the granting of 30% of the new licence to the telecoms arms of transport utility Transnet and energy producer Eskom.
The two groups were granted the share by Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri because they have a significant phone infrastructure.
The winner of the 19% bid is expected to be announced on July 1.
Madyibi said the ITA for the foreign operators, which is expected to attract interest from Asian and European operators such as SingTel and France Telecom, would go out around the end of April. – Sapa