Despite the Department of Communication’s (DoC’s) delivery of “most, if not all” the ambitions tabled last August, Communications Minister Yunus Carrim believed that more can, and must, be done to accelerate progress within the department.

In a presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Tuesday, he said the DoC had developed a strategy and programme for the period until the 2014 elections to place the department on firmer footing to deliver far more effectively in future, while fast-tracking South Africa’s communication development ambitions.

Among the promised outcomes was a less fragmented and fractious information and communication technology (ICT) sector, for which “key measurables” were tackled to assess the industry’s state.

Carrim, who planned to overhaul the department’s stakeholder engagement strategy, had continued engagements with relevant organisations and individuals on various issues, mediated differences between stakeholders and, since July, met 191 organisations and individuals.

Further, the development or finalisation of many regulatory and policy frameworks – including an effective Spectrum Policy; the revamping of a national integrated ICT Policy; a policy directive on transparent pricing and the National Broadband Policy, Strategy and Plan – were under way and well advanced.

A 102-page, 12-chapter National Integrated ICT Policy Green Paper aimed at revamping South Africa’s current misaligned national ICT policies had already been published for public comment, with public hearings expected to start in March.

In December, Cabinet approved the National Broadband Policy, Strategy and Plan, which was aimed at providing a universal average download speed of 100 Mb/s by 2030.

The department had also developed a draft Policy Direction on Spectrum for Broadband to facilitate universal broadband access and economic development, and was in the process of publishing the findings of a digital dividend study, which was deemed “essential” to the release of digital dividend spectrum.

Meanwhile, the DoC established an operations committee to review all the department’s internal policies and align them with the Department of Public Service and Administration and the National Treasury regulations.

The review was expected to be completed by April.

Meanwhile, despite government drawing the middle ground in the set-top-box debate that had ground South Africa’s digital terrestrial television project to a halt, industry remained divided over the control system.

The decoders would all be equipped with a control system, but Cabinet deemed its use as nonmandatory for those units not subsidised by government.

“As there is still not consensus on this approach, negotiations are continuing both through the facilitation team and in other ways. We would like this finalised as soon as possible,” Carrim told Parliament.

A digital signal switch-on date of April 1 was targeted.