According to recent reports, some ICASA (Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) inspectors are doing the rounds, visiting cellphone stores and confiscating cellphones not bearing the “ICASA approved” stickers. Some insiders claim that thousands of confiscating cellphones line the corridors of ICASA’s offices as evidence.

Apart from feeling sorry for the small guys, trying to make a living an honest living, albeit with some grey imports, one really wonders what the sense in ICASA’s madness is? After all, it is not really as if phones, not brought in through the “traditional” channels are any more dangerous than that shiny new dvd player that many has picked up from Hi-Fi Corp.

What is even more worrying is that ICASA is expending its energies on tackling this “issue”, whilst large tele-monopolies do just as they please, with ICASA not as much as batting an eyelid.

Examples, for those who do not follow the industry that closely, include the high-price-vs-bandwidth issues, the Telkom-ADSL-capping-debate, the delays in unbundling the local loop, the flagrant disregarding of regulations without sanction, the well-known delays in licensing the second network operator, the bad drafting of regulations with loopholes galore and the failure to bring down telecom costs, to name but a few.

Although br!ghtshark is lucky that his phone does have the ICASA stamp of approval and doesn’t face an impromptu confiscation of his phone, it is worrying that, in stead of dealing with the obvious issues in the local telecoms industry, ICASA is targeting the small fry. Let’s all hope sanity prevails now that ICASA has been given a bigger budget by Trevor Manual and that we all get cheap bandwith, and fast

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