South Africa’s telecommunications sector, through industry body the Association of Comms and Technology (ACT), has called for urgent action by government and regulators to address the country’s worsening power situation.

ACT, whose members include Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C, Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Rain, said in a statement on Tuesday that it is “crucial that the government and regulators take immediate and effective action to address the power crisis and network security as well as the issue of economic sabotage of physical infrastructure by outlining a comprehensive plan to address the problem”.

ACT, which is led by CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi (who has previously served as an acting director-general of communications), has outlined several steps it believes will go a long way to mitigating against the impact of the power cuts on the sector. These are:

Considering the provision of a diesel rebate to ensure that the high cost of diesel does not “unduly burden” the sector’s commercial operations. “Our members have been forced to reallocate their annual expenditure to deal with load shedding, which is unsustainable in the long term given the high cost of diesel,” it said.
Compelling the department of trade, industry & competition urgently to publish “block exemptions” regulations to allow competitors to work together to find solutions to the crisis, including collaborating on using common power sources and sharing security at co-located sites.
Designating the industry in terms of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act and acknowledging its importance as a national strategic asset that society relies heavily upon.
Increasing penalties for economic sabotage of physical infrastructure including fines and prison sentences to deter individuals and organisations from engaging in such activities. “The economic sabotage of physical infrastructure continues to have a significant impact on mobile network operators in South Africa. Theft and vandalism of telecommunications infrastructure such as towers, base stations and fibre-optic cables compounds the disruption of network coverage and service, resulting in loss of revenue for the economy as a whole as well as the mobile network operators.”
Providing regulatory relief that includes allowing mobile operators to increase their network capacity temporarily through the provision of spectrum for set periods of time and relaxing regulatory obligations that are arduous to comply with in the current environment.
Affording greater warning when there will be significant changes in load shedding stages, so that operators are able to better plan logistically and effectively mobilise resources like generators.
Steering the ICT sector with an effective and actionable plan to mitigate the power challenge.

ACT said it hopes newly appointed communications minister Mondli Gungubele uses his department’s budget vote speech in parliament this week to address some of these issues.

It said, too, that network operators have been forced to invest in alternative sources of energy at great cost, money that could have been better spent on accelerating rural and 5G network coverage and reducing the cost to communicate. – © 2023 NewsCentral Media