The South African government must be careful not to crowd out the private sector as it moves to increase the penetration of broadband services in the country.

This is the warning from Dimension Data Africa and Convergence Partners chairman Andile Ngcaba, who was speaking at the FTTH Council Africa broadband conference in Cape Town on Monday.

“There is nothing wrong with having disruptors in the market, but when a government is to participate, the rules must be very clear,” Ngcaba says.

“Defining the role of government in the broadband ecosystem will be very important,” he says. “Government and its agencies and institutions have an important role to play, but the role and focus of government initiatives, and the crowding out of private-sector investments, is something we need to be very careful of.”

Ngcaba, who served as director-general of the department of communications between 1994 and 2003, warns that government must be careful not to compete with private-sector players in ways that result in them finding their investments in infrastructure in trouble.

“There need to be very clear rules in the way this market operates, otherwise in the future we may find lots of conflict and legal and court cases if these issues are not addressed.”

He says there is an urgent need for an industry task force to work on local, provincial and national matters and to develop recommended regulations and policies to facilitate the growth of the industry.

“There’s nothing wrong in us working on these things and then tabling them to local authorities through the department responsible for that,” he says. “A lack of clarity will put all of our investments at risk.”

Last week, department of communications chief director for ICT policy, Norman Munzhelele, argued that the market had not delivered broadband services to all South Africans and set out a case for more muscular government involvement in the telecoms industry to help ensure that access to broadband becomes universal in South Africa. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media