Johannesburg – The Competition Commission has alleged that there was overwhelming evidence that South Africa suffered from ineffective competition due to the skewed market structure which perpetuates dominance of Vodacom and MTN.
Commission chief economist James Hodge told the second day of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) public hearing on the Mobile Broadband Services Inquiry that the market had not changed.
Hodge said the move to 5G risked a further cycle of technological leadership entrenching dominance.
“What we have seen in the past is that every shift to a new generation of technologies reinforces the leadership of Vodacom and MTN in the market because they are the ones with the pervasive coverage and the profitability and capital to make the technological leap early which gives them a distinct advantage in the market,” Hodge said.
“The roaming agreements and other agreements do not bring in those new technologies and this sets the challenger networks behind and we think that the current move to 5G means that wholesale regulations are more urgent now than ever, because what happens in the next five years will shape the sector for the next 15 to 20 years.”
In its Data Services Market last year, the commission recommended the retail prices were excessive, because of ineffective competition, not just spectrum constraint, and resulted in Vodacom and MTN slashing their prices of monthly data packages from April
