South Africa considering load-shedding regulatory relief for Vodacom, MTN, MultiChoice

Icasa has announced its plans to investigate the impact of load-shedding on South Africa’s ICT sector.

According to Icasa acting chair Yolisa Kedama, the inquiry will also focus on how it could deliver regulatory relief to the country’s major ICT companies — which are critical to the thriving of the country’s modern economy.

Many of South Africa’s top ICT companies have responded positively to Icasa’s announcement, reports The Sunday Times.

“While MTN has taken steps to increase security and modernise and replace power infrastructure, the continued load-shedding does decrease the life expectancy of power equipment like batteries,” said MTN South Africa’s chief of sustainability and corporate affairs, Jacqui O’Sullivan.

“At the same time, there is a significant increase in operating costs.”

Vodacom said it hoped the inquiry would bring to light the significant challenges companies like itself face.

“We hope that these insights will persuade the authority to reconsider some of the stringent compliance requirements and provide relief for operators to allow them to prioritise network resilience across the country,” said Vodacom.

“This is an important process as it also aims to introduce regulatory relief measures to offset the unprecedented burden load-shedding has imposed on technology-dependent businesses such as ours,” added a MultiChoice spokesperson.

Better late than never

While interventions from Icasa would be appreciated, South Africa’s telecommunications operators have already spent significant amounts of money dealing with the effects of load-shedding.

Vodacom, for example, is making good progress on the first phase of its virtual wheeling project it announced with Eskom in August last year.

Virtual wheeling will allow companies to buy power directly from independent power producers and consume it at multiple off-take sites.

Although companies will not be exempted from load-shedding as virtual wheeling still relies on the Eskom grid, Vodacom believes it will incentivise more private power to come online.

This, in turn, will help end load-shedding.

“The first [phase]… was to sign an agreement with Eskom with the ambition of helping to accelerate efforts to solve the power crisis, while at the same time moving Vodacom closer to its goal of sourcing 100% of its electricity demand from renewable energy sources,” said Vodacom spokesperson Byron Kennedy.

The second phase is to secure deals with independent power producers, said Kennedy.

“This is where our efforts are currently focused, and we’re making good progress.”

Once these agreements are concluded, Vodacom can deliver the third phase of the project – which comprises adding more capacity to Eskom’s grid without impacting the power provider’s balance sheet.

“At the same time, [we will be] moving an initial approximate 30% of Vodacom SA’s power demand into renewable sources,” said Kennedy.