|  Rushing
of the Draft Convergence Bill through Parliament will result
in yet more “vague and unclear” legislation in
the form of the Convergence Act, according to the Communications
Users Association of South Africa’s (CUASA) Ray Webber.
Responding
to the Department of Communication’s (DoC) call for
comment on the Draft Act, CUASA issued a statement this week
citing numerous omissions, inaccuracies or challenges with
the legislation.
“We
believe that convergence, in various forms, is already present
in numerous communications and telecommunications disciplines,”
says Webber. “In this regard, we welcome the DoC’s
apparent intentions to ensure that the changes in technology
are provided for in new legislation. In fact, we believe that
these changes are long overdue, as the existing legislation
is already seriously restricting users and suppliers. However,
our main concern is that it appears that this legislation
is being rushed through, with the result that the Draft Convergence
Bill is, in many cases, vague and unclear,” he says.
CUASA
suggests in their response to the DoC that interested parties,
as was done during the Convergence Colloquium, are invited
to participate in a process where the Bill is systematically
worked through in detail, and general or sufficient consensus
is obtained prior to the draft going before Parliament.
“The
draft act has obviously been rushed,” says Webber. “It’s
verbose in many respects, but extremely short on the essence
of convergence such as what exactly convergence means, how
the proposed services are defined, what the scope of the new
envisaged licenses are and how this act relates to other pieces
of legislation,” he says.
“With
regard to licensing (a particular feature of the proposed
legislation), we believe that in many instances it creates
an entry barrier for start-up businesses and often serves
to impede innovation. All too often licensing supports anti-competitive
behaviour because licensees have an incentive to lobby the
Regulator and use regulatory measures to protect themselves
from competition,” he says.
“We
appreciate that our statement may appear to differ from our
often repeated comments that convergence legislation is overdue,
but we are concerned that the Convergence Act will otherwise
be full of contradictions and uncertainty, as is the case
with the Telecommunications Act and other associated legislation,”
says Webber.
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