SUNDAY TIMES 29/4//2007 — 02/28/2008
WIKIPEDIA CO-FOUNDER SLAMS TELKOM MONOPOLY

Sunday Times (29/4/2007)
 
Government money squeeze in Telkom monopoly prevents access to Internet
Two of the world's leading Internet celebrities have blasted South Africa's telecommunications policy and called for the unbundling of the Telkom monopoly. The South African government owns a major stake in Telkom, which controls the infrastructure that makes surfing the Internet possible. Larry Lessig, author and cyber-law professor, and Jimmy Wales, co-founder of on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, said government's telecom monopoly was preventing access to the Internet, which plays a vital role in the spread of information. Lessig and Wales were guest speakers at a two-day digital technology exhibition at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town in April last year. Speaking to the Sunday Times afterwards, they voiced concern that high telecom prices were having a negative impact on Internet access.
 
SA's telecom policy backward and 'very troubling'
Lessig, who helped spearhead a recent anti-trust court case in the United States against software giant Microsoft, described South Africa's telecom policy as backward and 'very troubling'. He said: 'It's hard not to conclude that they [the government] have moved much too slowly, and the financial conflicts of interest that are involved here are very troubling. South Africa should be the leader on this continent and it will only be the leader if it adopts the lesson that has been learnt all around the world from Japan to the US, which is that deregulating and breaking up monopoly telecom companies is the essential first step to facilitating telecommunication prices dropping dramatically and access increasing dramatically.'
 
Artificially high prices stifling efforts to improve education
Wales, who visited schools in Cape Town, said artificially high telecom prices were stifling efforts to improve education: 'It's a crime that schools find Internet access so expensive when that could be solved very quickly with competition. Yesterday, one school had Internet in a black township and they said they don't really let the children use it because it's so expensive. That's absurd. The real costs in terms of equipment and technology could be so much lower without the distortion of the monopoly. It's all about the Telkom monopoly and the really bad ideas of the communications policy,' Wales said, adding that state control meant government had a vested interest in squeezing as much money out of the public as possible. Wales and Lessig have become icons of digital freedom and regularly speak out against efforts to regulate the Internet. The government's Department of Communications spokesman, Albi Modise, said the recent licensing of Neotel, an infrastructure-based competitor in the fixed line telecoms sector, would hopefully translate into improved service and cheaper telecom prices in South Africa. 'Obviously when you have competition you not only bring down the costs but you improve quality of service,' Modise said. He said he hoped Neotel would soon be in a position to challenge Telkom's market dominance. Telkom spokesperson Lulu Letlape said the company was not opposed to competition: 'We’re happy with competition and we welcome it, but we don’t really drive that process.'