The telecoms market has been under a process of managed liberalisation since 1996 with a key milestone being reached with the enactment of the new Electronic Communications Act, in 2005.

Another key milestone was reached in 2008 when Altech's successful legal bid to challenge adjudication of new individual Electronic Communications Network licences (i-ECNS) provided many in the South African telecoms industry with the hope of true liberalisation in the market.

While this has been beneficial in introducing competitive services and pricing to the retail telecoms market, it has, however, had the unintended consequence of emboldening other industries to see the now fragmented telecoms industry as an additional revenue opportunity.

Some property developers, landlords and/or their appointed agents, especially those that operate and manage Business Parks, demonstrate flagrant disregard for the obligations and expectations of the Electronic Communications Act ('the Act') by either blocking, restricting or preventing unfettered access to properties under their control to the extent that this frustrates ICASA licensed Service Providers from timeously fulfilling services provisioning of communications services to end-users who may be tenanted in those facilities.

These property developers/landlords and their appointed agents are making access to their facilities conditional on onerous and one-sided legal contracts that not only limit tenants' choice of Service Provider but in some cases even prevent access to bonafide licensed Service Providers based on convoluted 'exclusivity' agreements that are highly anti-competitive.

Furthermore some property developers now not only expect revenues from equipment room or mast / antenna space rental to licensed Service Providers, but are pushing for wholesale and retail revenue share of all ICT connections and services terminated in their buildings or on their properties. This has ramifications for carrier interoperability, quality of service, licensing obligations and the key tenets of Open Access as well as potentially adding unnecessary layers of cost to communications service delivery in South Africa.

Some property developers behave in a predatory way towards the telecoms industry and try and position themselves between Service Provider and end-user/subscriber. The Telecoms and Service Provider Industry ('the Industry') has had to fight local governments on more than one occasion to get reasonable access to deploy fibre optic infrastructure and the telecoms industry is now at a point where it is more than willing to exercise its rights to do the same in the private space.

The Industry reserves its right to access any land or property, public or private for the purposes of providing the services it is licensed to provided, in accordance with prevailing legislation and in consultation with the relevant stakeholders.

The Industry is committed to conducting itself in a reasonable, ethical and responsible manner to ensure that all end-users can get full and unrestricted access to the services offered by any licensed Service Provider and on the same terms and conditions irrespective of physical location.

The Industry accepts and agrees that landlords have a reasonable expectation of getting a return on their investment in properties and facilities, however this return should be garnered from the tenants in the leasing value proposition inclusive of all features and services available in the facility being leased and not by positioning revenue leakage in the service delivery chain of the Telecommunications and Service Provider Industry.

Landlords and Property Developers should stick to their knitting and rather seek to enable their facilities in the most cost-effective way so that they not only attract good quality tenants but that they keep them satisfied over their term of their tenancy. Telecommunications is as much a part of the modern office as coffee machines and water coolers.

The Industry has indicated to Business Park owners and their landlords that it is quite willing to pay a reasonable set-up and monthly fee to the respective business landlord or Property Company for any equipment space, power and facilities services rendered to the Service Provider at market-related rates. However, landlords need to accept that telecommunication infrastructure is as critical to a business as water and electricity and should be seen as a utility.

Landlords do not derive profits from providing water to a building and therefore the same applies to telecommunications costs.

Landlords and Property Companies of business parks should acknowledge that having strong connectivity to the high-speed fibre based communications networks in itself will significantly advantage them against those that are not 'on-net'.

* By Juanita Clark, CEO, FTTH Council Africa.