South Africa’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) has said while it welcomes the review of End-User and Subscriber Service Charter Regulations, the laws that protect end users through quality of service, the proposals fall short.
“ISPA’s position is that the current regulations should be repealed and replaced with a new set of regulations formulated to cater for specific broad categories of services offered by licensees by stipulating different sets of minimum standards for such broad categories of service,” said ISPA co-chairperson, Marc Furman.
The body said some changes may be unnecessary while others cause more problems than they solve.
Furman said it is clear the current regulations require review due to their inefficacy.
“However, the objectives of the regulations must be balanced against the cost of compliance to licensees and the ability of ICASA [Independent Communications Authority of South Africa] to actually process the information submitted by licensees into a sensible format which is useful to consumers,” he said.
The industry body said the cost of complying with the regulations is particularly hard on small to medium enterprises (SMEs)
“There needs to be a clear benefit,” it said.
The ISPA co-chair also said there are also troublesome definitions in the regulations that are important in its understanding.
“For example, the use of the terms ‘end-user and ‘subscriber’ in the Draft Regulations requires clear appreciation of the different relationships which they imply,” he said.
“ISPA understands the term ‘subscriber’ to refer to consumers who are not in the service provision value chain. It notes that the term ‘end-user’ is broader, incorporating ‘subscribers’ as well as those who are in the service provision value chain who obtain wholesale services from other licensees,” ISPA said.
“As a consequence, ISPA says that when the term ‘end-user’ is employed in order to define the scope of application of a quality of service parameter, it will apply equally between a licensee and a consumer on the one hand, and between licensees in a wholesale relationship on the other hand.”
Furman said the implications of regulating commercial licensees also need to be analysed.
“Is it, for example, the intention of the Authority to dictate to Telkom SA that the provision of its ADSL service as a ‘best effort’ service is no longer acceptable and that it be obligated, inter alia, to provide 99% network availability?” he said.
ISPA said it has made a submission to ICASA asking that it takes into account the variety provided by its members.
“The quality of service matric for latency is a good example. This is proposed by ICASA to be not more than 150-200ms, which is fine over a fixed network but creates difficulties for a member providing broadband over satellite,” the group said.
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