There is light at the end of the tunnel for South African consumers who are frustrated by excessively high broadband Internet costs and having to wait months for their service to be connected.
New draft regulations published this week by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) are set to shake up broadband service delivery and bring about major cost reductions, say industry observers.
The draft regulations stipulate that network operators have to deliver an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) service in an ADSL-enabled area within 14 days of receiving the application from the user.
“That is brilliant,” said an elated Rudolph Muller, founder of activist website MyADSL.
“ADSL connections can take up to three months, which has been one of our biggest gripes.”
The draft regulations also prohibit Internet service providers from charging a monthly ADSL access charge and disallows the capping of bandwidth at below 10 gigabytes (GB).
Muller said it was great news that the minimum GB cap — which currently stands at 3GB — was likely to be raised.
The introduction of a once-off ADSL access charge, instead of the current monthly charge, should cut pricing radically.
The draft regulations also stipulate that access to local websites should not be included in the cap.
Once users have reached their limit, they will still have access to local sites.
Said Muller: “One thing we have repeatedly asked for is that local bandwidth be free of charge to encourage local content. And not just the production of local content, its local hosting as well.”
Telkom spokesperson Lulu Letlape said the corporation would not comment until its legal and regulatory teams had studied the regulations.