Evaluate the impact of recent regulation changes on mobile consumers in South Africa
Date
2012-10-04
Authors
Khan, Yusuf
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Abstract
In recent years, the cellular industry has seen a massive growth in terms of
providing cell phone services to people in different parts of the world including
South Africa. This technology has made the world a smaller place to live in and
has allowed people to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world for both
joyous moments and emergencies. At the same time, there are claims that cellular
towers in very close proximity to residential areas affect people negatively by
causing ailments such as headaches and even cancer. The impact of regulation
changes for the cellular industry in South Africa has caused much debate recently.
This debate has been around the high interconnection charges that operators
charge subscribers for calls to other networks. Mobile Virtual Network Operators
are thriving mainly because of these high interconnection fees, their bulk buying
power as well as one-sided regulations that are favourable to them.
The objective of this research report is to evaluate the impact of recent regulation
changes on South African cell phone consumers. The research is based mainly on
four regulations in different areas of the cellular industry. These are the reduction
in interconnection fees, the deregulation of infrastructure based on Telkom’s
monopoly in the market, the spectrum allocation for new market players and the
enforcement of service level agreements by ICASA based on licensing conditions.
Twenty in-depth Interviews were conducted with various cell phone users from the
various South African cell phone companies in order to obtain data for the
research. This included seven different individuals who are using cell phone
services from more than one service providers. Interview data was content
analysed to see how the change in regulations has impacted cell phone users in
South Africa and how the industry can improve the affordability of cell phone
services in South Africa.
Researcher’s key findings are that reforms in South African telecommunication
sectors have been slow leading to poor competition in South African Cellular
industry. Thus ICASA failed to improve the cell phone affordability for cell phone users in South Africa in the past. However, in recent past ICASA has taken right
steps in right direction to improve the overall cell phone consumer experience in
South Africa by opening up frequency spectrum for new market players, allowing
all cell phone operators and Neotel to rollout transmission network, enforcing
reduction in interconnection fees between the cell phone operators and fixed line
operators as well as implementing service level agreement with cell phone
operators’ on behalf of cell phone consumers.
Description
MBA thesis - WBS
Keywords
Mobile telephony, Cell phone industry, Mobile phones