The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) may repeal its current draft local loop unbundling (LLU) regulations as it moves to engage stakeholders further on wholesale access and facilities leasing.

Icasa, which held a workshop on wholesale access under Chapter 8 of the Electronic Communications Act last week, would postpone the finalisation of the already much delayed LLU regulations to map out stakeholders’ positions, in particular, with regard to the framework, model terms and conditions of the agreement section of the draft Bitstream and Shared/Full Loop regulations.

Currently, the section provides for two options – the first being Icasa’s view on the terms and conditions of electronic facilities leasing agreements.

The second option, wherein licensees can exercise an option to provide recommendations to the agreements, has failed to garner “comprehensive” responses from operators, barring Neotel.

“We need to get to a point where we can bring the process to a close,” said Icasa chairperson William Stucke, indicating that the authority believed the workshop would aid development in future.

He pointed out that there was a need to address “option B” properly as it dealt with issues surrounding the unbundling, as well as facilities leasing.

Chapter 8 mandated wholesale access, with a particular emphasis on broadband, and aimed to facilitate direct access to consumers at commercial rates on a nondiscriminatory basis and prevent infrastructure duplication.

Stakeholders now have another 30 days to submit comments, with another one or two workshops expected to be held, after which it is likely that Icasa will withdraw the current draft and produce a new set of regulations. No new deadlines for the publication of the regulations were given.

The implementation of LLU would provide industry access to telecommunications group Telkom’s “last mile” of copper.

Telkom had previously stated that LLU could be a threat to revenues and the group’s financial viability, which were already under pressure given the increasingly competitive telecommunications market.