Vaal River, North-West Province
Vaal River, North-West Province
Map
of South African Internet Service Providers
1 South African Internet Service
Providers 2The Internet In South AfricaSouth Africa's Telecommunications Act is the law that applies most directly to the Internet in South Africa. The current Telecommunications Act was passed in November 1996.
The Act differentiates between Public Switched Telecommunications Services (PSTS) and Value Added Network Services (VANS). The Act also provides for the creation of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA). Only one company has been awarded a license to provide PSTS - Telkom. Telkom has also been awarded a license to provide VANS. These licenses were awarded to Telkom by the Minister of Communications, currently Jay Naidoo.
SATRA was constituted in February 1997 and will regulate the telecommunications industry in South Africa. SATRA’s decisions will be based on the new Act, the Telecommunications White Paper and the Decision Making Framework (DMF).
As one of its tasks, SATRA is authorized to issue licenses to provide VANS services to companies other than Telkom. SATRA will also determine the specific conditions under which VANS licenses are issued, guided by the existing regulatory framework. Since Section 40(2) of the Act seems to include many services currently provided by Internet service providers, it seems that Internet service providers (particularly access providers) are VANS providers. In a press statement issued by SATRA on May 15, 1997, SATRA clearly stated that it considers Internet services to be VAN services.
The DMF mentioned above is very relevant to the regulation of the telecommunications market. The DMF describes the process that will be used by SATRA to make regulatory decisions in four major areas:
Also, according to the market liberalization program, VANS providers will operate in a competitive market from the time that the regulator (SATRA) is established and VANS have been licensed. This means than all companies providing Internet services (including Telkom) must operate within a competitive environment. This means, for instance, that Telkom cannot legally use its monopoly position in other areas of telecommunications provision to its benefit in the Internet access provision market, through cross-subsidization, for instance. It should be noted however, that Telkom believe that some of the services (basically IP transport services) currently provided by Internet service providers are actually PSTS services. 3
A short history of South African
peeringIn mid-1996, UniForum, the non-profit body that has handled registration of the "co.za" domain name space since October 1995, set up South Africa’s first peering point. The basic principle of the UniForum peering point was free access to anyone wishing to connect to it. This peering point initially received support from a number of second and third-tier Internet access providers, but none from first-tier providers (those with their own international link). Since then, the launch of a separate peering point by the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) and the political tension between the ISPA and Telkom has prevented the UniForum peering point from growing further.
Towards the end of 1996, the ISPA launched its own peering point in Johannesburg. This peering point connects four of South Africa’s Internet first-tier access providers – The Internet Solution, UUNET Internet Africa, Global One and Global Internet Access. The peering point also provides peering to a large number of other Internet access providers who connect to the peering point through these companies. The ISPA also subsidizes a peering link from the peering point to Uninet, South Africa’s academic network. Applications to peer have also been made by a number of other companies.
The ISPA’s peering point has suffered from Telkom’s inability to install the high-speed lines needed to support the current level of traffic between the peering partner’s networks. Both Global One and UUNET Internet Africa (UIA) have orders for upgrades which are outstanding since November 1996. As an interim measure, UIA have installed a separate link to The Internet Solution on other premises.4
A second ISPA peering point in Cape Town is also currently being developed.
Domain names in South AfricaSouth Africa has been assigned the .za domain space by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. This domain namespace has been divided into a number of second-level domains: ac.za, alt.za, co.za, edu.za, gov.za, mil.za, net.za, org.za, school.za, tm.za and web.za. A number of other company or organization specific domains were also created in the early days of the top-level domain administration, but under the Uninet’s current administration policy for .za, no more of these will be created. The existing domains of this type are: cybernet.za, db.za, grondar.za, iaccess.za, imt.za, inca.za, landesign.za, nis.za, olivetti.za, pix.za, wooltru.za and wwf.za. The whois.za domain has also been reserved by Uninet, presumably for future use.
Currently, Uninet (a project of the Foundation for Research Development) manages the top-level .za country domain as well as the ac.za and net.za domains. The co.za and mil.za domains are managed by Uniforum. The Internet Solution administers org.za, The GEM Internet company administers tm.za, IBI – Internet by Intertech administers web.za, Govnet administers gov.za and the Western Cape Schools Network administers school.za. The alt.za and edu.za domains are administered by individuals.
Although all of the entities currently administering sections of the South Africa domain space do so in a reasonably unbiased and efficient manner, the internet.org.za project believes the current situation is not sustainable in the long-term. The current administrators do not have the accountability and Internet industry/community representation, which are necessary for the administration of a national resource. Efforts are thus underway to develop a proposal for a South African naming body.5
South Africa on the NetNo reliable figures are available for the number of users in South Africa as at 7 September 1997. Estimates tend to vary from 350,000 to 800,000. Based on the domain survey, and assuming similar user-per-hostname ratios for South Africa as for the rest of the world (about 5 users per hostname), 420,000 South African users in July 1996 was in line with the the 65m estimated users worldwide at that time. A more conservative figure was 250,000, which I would regard as a lower bound.
In July 1997, the domain survey estimate yields 600,000 South African users6.
Internet Connectivity in
Southern African Countries7| Country | Available Services | ISPs/Type | Standard/Protocol | National Telco Providing Service |
| Angola | E-mail, BBS | Multiple / NGO | Fidonet, UUCP | No |
| Botswana | E-mail, BBS | Single / University | No direct in- country connections | No |
| Lesotho | E-mail, BBS | Single / University | UUCP | No |
| Malawi | E-mail, BBS | Multiple / Universities | Fidonet | No |
| Mauritius | Full | Multiple / Private, NGO | Fidonet,Telnet, TCP/IP | Yes |
| Mozambique | E-mail,BBS | Multiple / University,NGO | UUCP | No |
| Namibia | Full | Multiple / Private, NGO | UUCP, Telnet, TCP/IP | No |
| South Africa | Full | Multiple / Private, NGO | UUCP,Fidonet, Telnet, TCP/IP | Yes |
| Swaziland | Full | Multiple / Private, NGO | Fidonet,TCP/IP | No |
| Tanzania | E-mail, BBS | Multiple / Private, NGO,University | Fidonet, UUCP | No |
| Zambia | Full | Single / Private | TCP/IP | No |
| Zimbabwe | Full | Multiple / Private, University,NGO | TCP/IP | No |
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Author: Felix R. Klimpacher
Last Update: April 29, 1998
This Page's URL is: http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/initeb/fklimpa/southafrica/intepage.html