Communications minister Roy Padayachie has outlined plans to increase competition in the technology and telecommunications sector, introduce pro-competitive regulatory reforms and drive up broadband penetration.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion of 30 of the industry’s leaders, including CEOs of the largest communications technology companies, Padayachie said broadband infrastructure development was a cornerstone of government’s plans to fast-track economic development, including job creation.

The minister said the growth in the sector in recent years had been driven by the growth in penetration of mobile voice services. He expected the data and IT services markets would grow the fastest in the next several years.

“We seek to guarantee that information and communication technologies will make a substantive contribution as an enabler for economic growth and the creation of new jobs and skills among our people as we strengthen the foundation for a knowledge-based economy,” he told industry leaders at Friday’s event.

Padayachie promised to “reconstruct” the department of communications to “provide policy leadership” and to work “faster, harder and smarter”.

He also said a priority was aligning state-owned enterprises with government priorities and implementing policy and regulatory reforms. “We will ensure that a pro-competitive remedies in all anticompetitive markets, learning from the work done on the regulation of call termination rates.”

The minister has promised to review the funding model of the Independent Communications Authority of SA to ensure “it is equal to the task while regulating competitively”.

“This may include introducing a cost-of-regulation recovery model, learning from other experiences such as Botswana and Tanzania,” Padayachie said.

Another proposal is to work with business, labour and civil society groups to develop a national policy framework for communications technology.

“A policy colloquium will be convened in the second quarter of 2011 to launch a policy debate on this matter.”

The department of communications has also established a task team on job creation. The team’s responsibility is to coordinate the various efforts of the department and the industry and to report back on progress made. — Staff reporter, TechCentral