After ten years of waiting, many South Africans are thinking our telecoms market might actually be getting somewhere. Altech stared down the communications minister and won, Neotel and the mobile carriers are laying fibre as fast as they can, and the Seacom international cable will provide an alternative to SAT-3 in July. The buzz about cheap bandwidth is palpable. After years of slipping down the global connectivity rankings, it might be our turn to start climbing them again.

But the truth is more sober. Our current situation is just the beginning of a three- to five-year process during which the incumbents with infrastructure will fight tooth and nail to protect their stranglehold on it. Bandwidth cost has come down considerably but won’t automatically plummet overnight when Seacom lands because many providers have existing contracts that cannot just be abandoned. The regulator has capacity problems and our legislative environment is one that favours delaying tactics and legal action. Telcos have armies of lawyers and often build business cases internally for contesting unpleasant regulation in the courts. Lessons from overseas, particularly from the UK, show local loop unbundling is not a panacea. And neither can we expect international investment in infrastructure while there remains the risk of local players suddenly getting access to Telkom’s network for a few cents per kilometre. This is a challenging time for the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa).