ANC MP and former deputy justice minister Johnny de Lange has torn strips off the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), calling the telecommunications industry regulator “spineless” and a “prisoner” of the big network operators.
De Lange was speaking at hearings in parliament on mobile interconnection rates, the fees the cellphone providers charge one another to carry calls on their networks.
“For the first time in my life, I hear from an institution that thinks that following due process means being spineless,” De Lange said. “I want to assure you that following due process does not equal spinelessness.
“The reason you have been made a regulator and been given exclusive powers is for you to do your job and to make important decisions on behalf of this country,” he said. “You don’t seem to understand that if you don’t make the decisions, the decisions aren’t made.
“The process you are taking [to regulate interconnection rates] is completely and utterly wrong. By becoming a prisoner of the industry is clearly not the way to become a regulator. You cannot become friends of the industry that you’re supposed to regulate.
“Of course you must try as far as possible to avoid conflict and going to court but, while you’re sitting and waffling on for years and years, we are paying billions and billions and billions of rand to this industry, which they should not be getting. And you seem to fail to understand that. Every day and every minute that you waste … you’re exacerbating the problem.
“If I was in the industry, I would be laughing to have a regulator like this. You are the operators’ prisoners.
“You don’t take yourselves seriously. How must we take you seriously? You’re clearly not taking parliament seriously and you’re definitely not taking the public seriously. If you were, you’d have been jumping to sort this out. Can’t you see everyone is on your side, and not on the industry’s side?”
De Lange said parliament ought to summon the mobile operators when it reconvenes in October. “Let the industry come and account for the profits they’re making,” he said. “I suggest we … go into their books and their operating methods. There are a lot of other areas where they should be cutting their costs.
“This industry is doing terrible things to the people of this country. And the problem is our regulator is not making decisions.”
Icasa was not immediately given the opportunity to respond to De Lange’s comments. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
