The managing director of Broadlink, which suffered significant network downtime yesterday as a result of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) raiding a licensee, has told HumanIPO he was as surprised as anyone when the move took place.
ICASA visited the office of Wireless Business Solutions Holdings yesterday and confiscated equipment in the latest twist in an ongoing dispute between the company and the regulator over alleged unpaid licence fees.
Speaking to HumanIPO Mike Brown, managing director of Broadlink, which uses the WBS network for its iBurst service in Gauteng, said: “WBS had some equipment confiscated by ICASA yesterday and that meant a large portion of our clients went down.”
Brown said the bulk of iBurst clients were now back online, but he found it hard to disguise his frustration at the whole episode.
He added: “I do know about the dispute between WBS and ICASA. It is a proper dispute and people need to resolve it and I understand they are tyring.
“It looks as though they are dealing with it. It came as a complete surprise to us though. It would have been nice to have some warning, but it didn’t come.”
Marian Shinn, the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson for communications, meanwhile has praised ICASA for taking the action.
She said: “This should serve as a warning to the many network providers, who have exploited ICASA’s weak administration to their financial advantage, that they are likely to feel the wrath of their disconnected customer base if they don’t make prompt arrangements to pay their outstanding fees.”
Shinn went on to describe WBS’s “tardiness with its fee payments” and said she hoped “yesterday’s action is just the first in a series of actions against many spectrum licence-fee transgressors”.
