News & Updates
Privatisation in Practice
It is difficult to maintain in South Africa that the state should provide – much less monopolise – any good or service, given its track record.
31 October 2024
It is difficult to maintain in South Africa that the state should provide – much less monopolise – any good or service, given its track record.
When regulatory rules and red tape go off the rails, the entire economy takes a knock.
On 17 March 2022, South Africa’s Government finally concluded the auction process of mobile radio spectrum, during which 306 MHz of spectrum were bid off to the six participating carriers: Cell C, Liquid Telecom, MTN, Rain, Telkom and Vodacom. The most important results of the auction were that MTN and Vodacom obtained 210 MHz.
This is unparalleled globally. Icasa lives in a dangerous parallel universe where ideology and power politics leave no room to think about consumer benefit.
The key message of this study is that regulatory failure and political ideology have deprived South African consumers of better data coverage and lower prices.
Icasa and the Competition Commission continue inhibiting efficient markets on the pretext of ‘market failure’ and ‘insufficient’ competition
Telecommunications and Broadcasting Regulator ICASA’s justification for the imposition of license fees for COVID-19 emergency spectrum does not stand up to scrutiny.