Enforcing Compliance
All operators face the risk of fines, suspension or annulment of licences, and confiscation of their equipment if they are discovered to be operating without a licence. Operators particularly are at risk using C-band, which continues to be heavily used for terrestrial services. Countries increasingly are developing laws and regulations for the telecommunications sector that are objective, easily understood and highly predictable. Such laws and regulations also prohibit government actions that are arbitrary or discriminatory.
Mainstream businesses tend to avoid investing in countries that lack objective, transparent and predictable regulatory structures. Furthermore, a government-imposed restriction on the number of participants in a particular market segment also serves to prevent many mainstream businesses from providing services in the country.
Conclusions
Providing increased access to ICTs in Africa is a complex problem. Access to the Internet and other telecom services has been held back not only by restrictive regulatory frameworks, but also antiquated infrastructure, high fixed costs, low economic and investment activity, diverse geography, language and culture, and much more. Of the world’s 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), 31 are in Africa. The ITU has calculated that it takes, on average, 50 years to reach a teledensity of 50 main lines, a level reflecting high telecommunication development. But until a country reaches 1 main line per 100 inhabitants, it is “virtually impossible” to predict how long it will take to reach higher levels. Thirty-four of the 49 LDCs have a teledensity of less than one.
The Pan-Africa Satellite Survey and case studies conducted for “Open and Closed Skies: Satellite Access in Africa,” also have demonstrated that satellite has emerged as an important tool that is capable of leveraging accelerated access to ICTs, provided that African governments are prepared to actively facilitate its use. VSAT is not proposed as the only tool for Africa’s challenges; it is one of several tools, each of which plays to its respective strengths — fiber for point-to-point services, mobile for voice and narrow-band data, satellite for point-to-multipoint narrow and broadband solutions.
In the satellite area, frequency use, network operations, service provision and the use of radio terminals can be considered as the main elements which have been the target of a number of regulatory measures normally meant to help the development of satellite telecommunications and facilitate market access to satellite providers, but which may also act as market barriers. At the same time, the industry’s competitive structure has also changed at the level of national and international markets: Many Post, Telegraph and Telephone organizations (PTTs) have been privatized, as well as intergovernmental satellite operators. This concurrent evolution of satellite operators, service providers, and applications — as well as their corresponding regulatory treatment — highlights the importance of ensuring transparent and non-discriminatory market access conditions as the best means of promoting an individual country’s development. Like never before, and as stated in the definition of ITU-D Question 17/1, “administrations must ensure that their regulatory treatment provides a level playing field for both existing and emerging satellite operators, service providers and satellite-based applications.”
Liberalization, transparency and a commitment to satellite regulatory harmonization are within Africa’s reach. So too is Africa’s ability to transform the statistics.
David Hartshorn is Secretary General of the Global VSAT Forum (GVF). Martin Jarrold is the Chief of International Programme Development for the GVF. Mike Jensen is an independent ICT consultant. This original report on which this article is based was made possible through support from the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC). The print version of the report was published in September 2004 in both English and French language editions, and has since been widely circulated throughout the regulatory community in Africa and throughout the world. A soft copy, organized for both narrowband and broadband download is available from www.gvf.org.
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