Windhoek — Government has to re-look some of the provisions within the Draft Telecommunication Bill if it wants to have a practical regulatory act in place, the Namibia Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) says in its latest policy brief.

Among the highlighted aspects of the draft bill are long skills development strategies and a truly independent and impartial regulatory body to which the Minister of Information and Communication Technology will have no influence over except on purely policy matters.

The author of the policy brief and research associate at NEPRU, Dr Christoph Stork, points at various clauses within the bill that, in his opinion, give the minister a role that interferes with the regulator on regulatory process. These include the appointing of board members by the minister as well as allowing the minister to direct the regulator to charge an extraordinary fee for a licence.

"The regulator needs to be independent and impartial. The role of the minister is to provide policy guidance and not intervene with the regulatory process. The draft bill needs to be modified to separate these functions clearly," said Stork.

He said the board of the regulator would best be appointed by Parliament, as the regulator is not a State-owned enterprise.

The Draft Telecommunication Bill intends to create a levelled playing field for communication companies who have been engaged in public spats, price wars and arguments as they fight for market share.

The three Namibian communication companies, MTC, Cell One and Telecom, are tussling over interconnection tariffs, accusing each other of charging tariffs higher than the recommended tariff by the current Namibian Communication Commission, as well as the awarding of licensing.

Stork says a cost based interconnection is the right principle.

"Benchmarking countries that introduced it already would be a cheaper and quicker way to implement it. The regulator would need to be required to determine benchmarked interconnection. Operators could have the option to apply for lower or higher interconnection rates based on forward looking long-run incremental costs," Stork said.

In his analysis, Stork compared the Draft Telecommunication Bill to the South African Electronic Communications Act of 2005, communication regime from which the Namibian drafters copied certain sections. The dangers of following through with these certain sections as in South Africa, says Stork, are difficulties in implementing the act and regulating the industry.

"The bill, in principle, does all that is required to make operators compete fairly but is impractical for Namibia. An opportunity exists to create a regulatory framework that maximises competition and minimises administrative burden for everyone involved," Stork said.

The policy brief also recognises the importance of staffing the regulator with required skill, something that is currently not available and needs to be developed.

"In the meantime, there are several strategies available to the regulator.

Unfortunately, the current Draft Telecommunication Act ignored many of these options. To deliver on the objectives of lower prices and greater penetration, they need to be addressed as a matter of urgency," said Stork.

On licensing, Stork says the definitions in the draft bill are not clear and would be difficult to implement for the regulator.