Telecommunications and Universal Service: International Experience in the Context of South African Policy Reform

This publication is intended to suggest some approaches to the delivery of universal telecommunication service, with reference to the challenges facing South Africa in providing universal service delivery that combines the needs of a highly sophisticated urban business sector with the needs of a vast, underserved population in urban townships and rural areas. It first outlines some central concepts pertaining to universal service, then discusses the issue of state monopoly versus private competition in providing that service. It describes the dangers for universal service posed by market liberalisation in its hypothetical pure form, and highlights the important influence of non-structural factors on achievement of universal service. Chapter three describes the instruments, measures, and requirements for the pursuit of universal service, attempting to draw out key structural relationships, limitations of each, and their relation to different industry structures. Chapter four discusses demands of a proposed Universal Service Agency and the final chapter provides more detailed descriptions of telecommunication industry structures, regulatory regimes, and universal service instruments and actions on a country by country basis.