The Electronic Communications Act must be amended to accelerate connectivity in South Africa through better infrastructure investment, an industry lobby group has said.
Nomvuyiso Batyi, a former director-general in the department of communications and now CEO of the Association of Comms and Technology (ACT), has said that despite progress, there are still communities who are not connected to broadband internet even though it is a critical enabler of the digital economy.
Reasons for this vary from a lack of infrastructure sharing and policy ambiguity to no direct public funding or targeted incentives.
ACT membership is made up of South Africa’s six major telecommunications operators: MTN, Rain, Cell C, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Telkom and Vodacom. It was founded in 2021.
Batyi said innovative market entrants, including fibre network operators and wireless service providers, have, however, actively engaged in bridging this access gap and capitalising on what is now viewed as a “gold rush”. This is mainly due to the government’s efforts to cut red tape in ICT infrastructure deployment.
She said a problem is these projects are capital intensive, yet they receive no funding or incentives from government.
“Therefore, notwithstanding the demonstrable progress in infrastructure deployment, the sector faces persistent and significant impediments.”
‘Constrained’
“While certain regulatory interventions, like rapid deployment policies, have aimed to streamline administrative processes, their efficacy has been constrained by a reliance on commercial partnerships with incumbent backhaul providers, rather than direct public funding or targeted incentives,” Batyi said in a statement.
“Furthermore, public sector initiatives aimed at expanding network access have frequently been stymied by funding shortfalls, policy ambiguities and administrative delays. This has resulted in the suboptimal allocation of public funds, with hundreds of millions of rands being expended on incomplete networks and unutilised equipment.”
These market inefficiencies are compounded by a pervasive duplication of physical network assets, including towers and fibre-optic routes.
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She warned that this practice of multiple operators independently constructing parallel infrastructure to serve the same geographic areas inflates capital expenditure and operational costs for both firms and consumers. The knock-on effect is network expansion into less commercially viable areas increasingly becoming unattractive, which prolongs the digital divide.
Drawing on a report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, Batyi argued that infrastructure sharing represents a compelling and well-established solution to these challenges. By consolidating passive and active infrastructure assets, such as towers, data centres and fibre-optic cables, network operators can achieve substantial reductions in deployment and maintenance costs.
She said that unlike licensed telecoms services, passive infrastructure is primarily governed by local permitting, zoning and environmental regulations, rather than the ECA. This legislative discrepancy is a key impediment to the efficient, fair and inclusive expansion of South Africa’s communications networks.
“Effective infrastructure sharing regulation necessitates a legislative amendment to the ECA to formally incorporate all infrastructure players. In addition to such an amendment, the legislation should establish clear and enforceable rules on pricing, access and service quality to ensure the best outcomes for the market,” Bayti said.
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“The framework must be flexible enough to allow for continued service differentiation and innovation among operators while ensuring the benefits of reduced capital expenditure are passed on to consumers. By creating a more effective regime, such regulation would stimulate efficiency and lead to better infrastructure investment.” – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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