Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri expressed confidence on Friday that there would still be an announcement on the winning bidder for the second national operator (SNO) for fixed-line telephony by the end of the financial year.
At a media briefing in Parliament the minister was asked if she expected the SNO to be up and running by the end of the year, and she replied: “This is what we want to aim at … there is nothing to tell me that it won’t happen.”
This follows the rejection of two bids by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).
Matsepe-Casaburri said she had solicited legal advice from senor counsel in order “to give an appropriate response to Icasa and all affected parties”.
Asked if she did indeed decide to accept the Icasa recommendation, what would be the road forward, she said: “Those are the things we will look at; we will advise you,” adding that there are legal implications either way.
She said whatever decision was taken would be in the best interests of the country “in the circumstances”.
Last month Isaca recommended that neither of the two applications — Goldleaf Trading and Optis Telecommunications — for a 51% stake in the SNO receive a stake. It said notwithstanding the applicants’ strengths “they still fall short of the envisaged rival to [the semi-privatised telephone operator] Telkom owning a 25-year-licence and controlling a 51% equity stake”.
A 30% stake goes automatically to Transtel — of Transnet — and Esi-tel, a subsidiary of Eskom Enterprises.
Asked to comment on Eskom Enterprises’s concern at the viability of the billion-rand investment in its communication line, director general Andile Ngcaba said: “They have raised this matter even during the hearings [of the authority]. Once we get the senior counsel to respond we will try and move as soon as possible.”
The financially troubled Eskom Enterprises’s CEO, Enos Banda, told the parliamentary public enterprises committee last week that the entity would have to write off its R1-billion investment if the new phone company was not selected by the end of the year.
Banda reported that he had advised that the investment — R700-million two years ago and R300-million as a carrying cost — would have to be written off as it was not yielding any return, as expected by this time. — I-Net Bridge