South Africa's Telco Industry Calls For Tech Firms To Help Fund Infrastructure

South Africa's telecoms industry body is pushing for digital content and service providers to help pay for the roll out of network infrastructure because they generate a huge part of the internet traffic. From a report: The Association of Comms and Technology (ACT) CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said that the revenues generated by over-the-top (OTT) platforms and the continued success of the OTT model was dependent on the availability of high-quality, reliable and efficient network infrastructure. So "what we're saying is that the OTTs should contribute towards the network upgrades, the network building," she added. OTT platforms or services deliver digital content such as video, audio and messaging directly to consumers over the internet. "Fair share" arrangements ensure that OTT providers contribute to the costs of building, maintaining, and upgrading the infrastructure that supports their business.

raison d'etre

[bugs2squash]

you mean they provide the content that drives your business

They do contribute

[frdmfghtr]

It's called "monthly access fees" or whatever legalese is used in the service contracts.

Shouldn't periodic expansions and upgrades be considered the cost of doing business?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

It depends if you think that internet access is a utility like electricity, i.e. that it's so essentially it should be cheap and available to everyone.

If so, clearly someone has to pay for the updates, and it can't be just the end user or it won't be affordable anymore.

That's basically the reasoning in the EU. Big internet companies make vast profits from it, so they should pay a little back to keep it cheap and good quality for the citizens who they profit from.

WTF

[NotAMarshallow]

I say go back to your good buddies in China that you've made your bed with and let them build it for you. Turn your back on the west but beg for help now.

"Fair share"

[Anonymous Coward]

The battle cry of the perennial freeloader.

Zombie Multicast?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I like how the service providers are just flooding their routers with content for no reason and their paying customers aren't requesting it and receiving it.

"I know, we'll make somebody else pay for what we want!" - every socialist ever

Re:

[alvinrod]

It's not hard to blame them. The government is mandating they provide services to everyone regardless of whether they can pay for it and they can't so the providers better find someone else to squeeze. To what extent they'll go along with that remains to be seen.

South Africa will probably collapse in the next two decades. As slowly ineffectual as they are, the leading ANC (African National Coalition) party aren't the worst choice. The ANC are slowly loosing popularity to more extreme parties and as thing

Re:

[Luckyo]

It's not like Zimbabwe was an exception on the continent where this sort of shit is a norm when an outsider isn't forcing a different outcome.

Just like US slowly leaving European defense is slowly leading to conflicts among the old fault lines.

Geography is destiny.

South Africa is in trouble

[BishopBerkeley]

It seems like the corruption and incompetence that is hampering the electricity utility industry in SA has spread to telecom: https://www.dw.com/en/south-af... [dw.com]

Pretty sad.

two can play that game

[zeiche]

in exchange for providing investments towards telecom infrastructure, content providers should demand funds to pay for the equipment that the telecom customers use. it is only fair.

Let's do it the other way around

[dnaumov]

Nobody wants an internet connection without some services to use and websites to visit, so how about we impose an extra tax on telcos to fund the tech bros instead?

Double-Dipping Ain't a Good Look

[SPQRBob]

I've seen the occasionally calls for this kind of thing in the United States as well and my first question is to wonder if these various high-volume network traffic tech companies are somehow obtaining their Internet service for free? Because if not, then these tech companies have already negotiated a contract for service which takes network bandwidth utilization into account much in the same way that we as the consumers of these tech companies' services pay for our connections to the Internet and what sp

This is not unique to South Africa

[Gollum]

Network providers in other countries are also attempting to get OTT providers to pay for "transit" across their networks to their own customers.

https://www.lightreading.com/b... [lightreading.com]

A general discussion about OTT providers in the context of carriers:

https://carritech.com/ott-tele... [carritech.com]

And a brief discussion about paying for transit, and partitioning the internet:

https://bgp.tools/kb/partition... [bgp.tools]

Re:

[Gollum]

And a contemporary response to network providers wanting their "fair share": https://techcentral.co.za/andi... [techcentral.co.za]

Does the government need to manage the funds?

[chas.williams]

Because this sounds like more graft and corruption.

A country destroyed

[hoofie]

Since it is South Africa what it actually means is the money bucket is empty therefore we need new suckers to fill it so we can all drive new Mercedes and build big mansions again whilst the countries infrastructure gets even worse. You can 't even call South Africa a 3rd world country as anything in Asia with that name is now so far ahead of SA in infrastructure and services it's laughable.

Get your house in order first.

[jonadab]

Maybe before you start asking IT companies to build you a bunch of improved network infrastructure, you should focus on making your power grid sufficiently reliable that your people can actually *use* the network infrastructure that already exists. And then, once you've got that done, then maybe we can start talking about additional network infrastructure.

I'll be over here in a developed country, pointedly *not* holding my breath.