ICASA publishes framework for licence conversion

ICASA have released the long anticipated and somewhat overdue (they were supposed to be out in late August 2006) guidelines for how existing licenses will be converted into the new framework under the Electronic Communications Act that came into being on July 19 2006.

I can’t see it on their web site, although the Government Gazette doc says it is there… but have made the .pdf copy available for anyone interested here.

No real surprises here w.r.t. Value Added Network Service providers like Storm.  Good to see that Private Telephone Networks (many municipalities and large corporates have these) who wish to sell spare capacity will only need a Class license (fill in a form, pay a fee, abide by the generic conditions and you’re in business) - depending on how many take this opportunity and how much spare capacity they build... it could bring lots of options to VANS for national and regional and metropolitan bandwidth.

 

The critical thing for VANS will be :

a) what conditions and costs are attached to an individual ECS (Electronic Communications Services) license, and

b) how a "network" is defined - which will determine who gets an ECNS (Electronic Communications Network Services) license (class or individual) whether they want it or not, and again what conditions and costs are attached to an ECNS license.

 

The bun-fight is yet to come.

 

Comments

[Dave Gale]

I did look Peter, I promise! Either it had yet to be posted or I was looking at a cached version of your site? (then again I have been known to look for my glasses when they're on my head! ;)

Great to have you drop by though - when is ICASA starting a blog? (ok, ok, I'll address that to the Chairman where it belongs) Seriously though, you guys need a good PR outfit and to make the organisation so much more accessible.

But then you also need a decent budget and salaries.

[Peter]

Reference your second paragraph, all I can say is you didn't look very hard because the item in question is on the home-page (i.e. the very first page for those persons not familiar with Internet protocol) and is the second item in the "What's New" section.

Happy (further) Browsing