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Meeting with South African Official-Cum-Business
Telecome Delegation
November 27, 2001, New Delhi
Welcome Address of Shri Rajan Bharti
Mittal, Chairman, FICCI Telecom Committee
It gives me a great pleasure to extend a warm welcome
to all of you at this Meeting with South African Official-cum-Business,Telecom
Delegation. I would like to thank Mr Mandla Langa, Chairperson
of ICASA(Independent Communication Authority of South
Africa), H.E. Ms M E Nkoana Mashabane, High Commissioner
of South Africa in India, Mr Andile Ngcaba, Director
General, Department of Communications, South Africa.
I would also like to extend my thanks to Mr Dhanendra
Kumar, Additional Secretary and Mr N Parameswaran, DDG(LR),
Department of Telecommunications, Govt. of India, who
despite of their busy schedule have agreed to address
the Meeting.
We are in the information era and the world is transforming
itself into a multimedia information society. Telecom
and Information technology are influencing every activity
in one’s life. In the present age of information
revolution, use of communication facilities for commercial
activities are acknowledged to be the pivot on which
developing nations base their economic development .
Opportunities in this sector has been growing rapidly
not just in India but all over the world. It is believed
that information communication sector is growing at
almost twice the rate of the rest of the economy. To
exploit the emerging use market, different countries
are restructuring their Telecom sectors.
India has a history for more than 100 years in telecommunications.
But real advancements have taken place after 1991 only
and to be specific after 1993-94 with the opening up
of value added services like cellular and mobile services.
In 1994 Government of India came up with the National
Telecom Policy 1994 which led to enhancements and the
opening up of private sector in basic services.
(Please give your experiences about):
1. Regulatory aspect
2. NTP'99 and migration process.
3. Coming up of Convergence Bill followed by migration
process.
There are few similarities between the process of policy
initiatives taken by both India and South Africa. South
Africa also started with opening up of value added services
followed by privitaisation of basic services. Now, South
Africa is in the process of re-structuring its communication
sector and are now looking for the entry of private
operators to compete with the current sole public sector
operators.
Overview
Africa is on the verge of a telecommunications explosion
with telecommunications traffic on the continent forecast
to grow by nearly 60 times over the next five years.
Telkom, a parastatal is the only licensed provider
of public switched telecommunications services. Cellular
services are currently provided by two licensed operators
: Vodacom and MTN (Mobile Telephone Network). A third
cellular license for Cell-C, a Soudi Arabian backed
company was approved in the first half of 2001. South
Africa runs on the GSM cellular system. It is also important
to note that IT enabled developed software could be
manufactured in India to run telecom packages in South
Africa.
Key Issues:
Access to telecom services is still a major obstacles.
One of the ICASA's key mandates is to promote quality
and affordable telecom services to those previously
denied them. This includes encouragement of service
provision to previously neglected or ignored areas and
promoting the involvement of new players in the industry.
The second issue is increasingly important in light
of the fact that Telkom still dominates the South African
market and that the delay in licensing the third cellular
operator had seen the two incumbents, MTN and Vodacom,
snap up more users at a rate of about 100,000 a month.
Licensing and regulation of telecom services is important.
At the end of the Meeting we hope to understand the
various issues related to regulatory system, license
process, investment environment (micro and macro) and
so on, With this Meeting we hope that India and South
Africa are able to learn from each other's experiences
and mutually benefit.
Now I would like to invite Mr Mr Mandla Langa, Chairperson
of ICASA (Independent Communication Authority of South
Africa) to Address the Meeting.
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