High Sites: Red tape delays progress

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 11 August 2010

It is no secret that Wireless Broadband Providers, especially mobile operators, are fighting an uphill battle to find suitable high sites to erect base stations or towers in South Africa. This is hard enough as it is, but now it seems that red tape or bureaucracy are causing extended delays, making it even harder to erect much needed additional base stations or towers.

Base stations are needed to expand networks…

The idiots at municipal level who are holding up environmental impact assessments when it comes to the construction of new base stations should educate themselves on the importance of new base stations, not only to the users of the affected services and the relevant sector, but to the South African economy as a whole.

A lack of base stations/towers leads to network congestion which in turn leads to a substantial drop in the quality of affected mobile services. In addition, delays in environmental impact assessments, not only impacts negatively on the telecoms sector as a whole, but also on healthy competition in the relevant sector. The more delays, the greater the cost to get base stations up and running. This makes it virtually impossible for new operators to enter the market and extremely difficult for existing operators to expand their networks and to ensure a high quality of service. This of course all impacts negatively on the South African economy. Effective and affordable telecoms are critical to our success as a country.

If the idiots at municipal level really want to do something to protect the environment, except delaying environmental impact studies, then they should make sure that basic services are running smoothly. In our opinion, unclean water and inadequate waste removal can do more harm to the environment than a million base stations. It defies logic that the ones who are helping to destroy the environment through a total lack of work ethic, are the very same ones who have the responsibility to make sure that environmental impact assessments are done in a timely manner.

In other words, idiots, especially at municipal level, are holding up environmental impact assessments which are needed before new base stations can be erected. This is not good, if one considers the importance of erecting additional base stations in a timely manner.

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