Independent Communications Authority of South Africa

Independent Communications Authority of South Africa

ICASA
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Agency overview
Formed	1 July 2000
Preceding agencies	South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA)
Jurisdiction	Government of the Republic of South Africa
Headquarters	Sandton, Johannesburg
Ministers responsible	Faith Muthambi, Minister of Communications Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Deputy Minister of Communications
Agency executives	Rubben Mohlaloga, Acting Chairman Pakamile Kayalethu Pongwana, CEO
Child agency	Complaints and Compliance Committee
Website	ICASA

Competition law
Basic concepts
History of competition law Monopoly Coercive monopoly Natural monopoly Barriers to entry Herfindahl–Hirschman Index Market concentration Market power SSNIP test Relevant market Merger control
Anti-competitive practices
Monopolization Collusion Formation of cartels Price fixing Bid rigging Product bundling and tying Refusal to deal Group boycott Essential facilities Exclusive dealing Dividing territories Conscious parallelism Predatory pricing Misuse of patents and copyrights
Enforcement authorities and organizations
International Competition Network List of competition regulators
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The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is an independent regulatory body of the South African government, established in 2000 by the ICASA Act to regulate both the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors in the public interest. Traditionally, telecommunications and broadcasting services operated separately and so has the regulation of the sectors. Broadcasting in South Africa was regulated by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), whereas telecommunications was regulated by the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA). Rapid technological developments have led to the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications services. This also had an influence on the convergence of regulation resulting in the merging of the IBA and SATRA. ICASA functions under the Department of Communications (DoC). It was initially composed of seven Council members. The ICASA amendment Act of 2006 included the Postal services, previously regulated by the Postal Authority into ICASA’s mandate. It increased the Council members from seven to nine to accommodate the new members from the Postal Authority.

ICASA’s mandate is to regulate electronic communications (i.e. broadcasting and telecommunications) and postal services in the public interest. It derives its mandate from the following primary pieces of legislation (and subsequent amendments thereto):

Some of functions of ICASA include the following:

Below are some of the relevant sections from the legislations highlighting ICASA's mandate and purpose :-

In South Africa, the first radio and television broadcasts were done in 1923 and 1976 respectively. The first Broadcasting Act was promulgated in 1936 and it established the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) solely for radio broadcasting. In 1976, the Broadcasting Act was amended to include television broadcasting. The SABC acted as a state broadcaster and was used as a political propaganda instrument of the government to support its policies. The SABC had monopoly over the airwaves even though there were some free-to-air broadcasting services in the former Bantustans. These broadcasting services (like Radio Bop, Bop TV, Capital Radio and Radio 702) partially overlapped from the Bantustan areas into certain parts of South Africa.

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