This article first appeared in the Financial Mail

Convergence is driving change in many industries. Driven by technology, convergence eliminates boundaries between traditional media. Simply stated, it means you can watch videos on your PC, use your TV to browse the Web, and hear your favourite radio stations on the Internet.

The last decade has seen substantial telecommunications policy reforms worldwide, characterised by a trend towards privatisation and increased competition.

This is posing new challenges to telecoms and broadcasting regulators globally. SA is no exception. Convergence is threatening to test long-held views regarding the best way of ensuring equitable delivery of information and communication technologies to underserviced markets.

The value of communications technology as a powerful tool for the delivery of essential services, such as health care and education, as well as small business development, is widely recognised. However, in many of these developing countries, telecoms operators tend to be State-owned enterprises, or in the early stages of liberalisation. This often restricts them from embracing the full range of these services due to a number of factors, such as the adoption of monopoly market structures, obligations to investors, and a range of national, social and economic policies.

The convergence of sectors and services also necessitates the convergence of laws, which, in turn, is likely to compel the convergence of regulatory institutions.

At its simplest, regulation needs to promote technological innovation, access and infrastructure development, fair competition and foreign investment.

The proposed merger between the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the SA Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) will undoubtedly bring the question of convergence to the fore. Both are mandated to regulate in the public interest. Implicit in this mandate is ensuring that the object, spirit and letter of the Telecoms Act are met.

However, convergence presents a double edged-sword. On one hand, digital age technology offers increased delivery of telecoms facilities, applications and services that promise "leapfrog" capabilities through the various stages of development. On the other hand, convergence also raises questions about the applicability, efficiency and desirability of the current regulatory framework aimed at ensuring this goal, which can hinder the introduction of services, and applications that may appear to challenge Telkom's monopoly.

Two issues filed with Satra last year illustrate this difficulty. A dispute between Telkom and Uthingo, the new lottery consortium, which also has a public interest mandate, over facilities required to operate the national communications network for the lottery, led to an application for Satra's intervention.

Disputes over value-added network services (Vans), meanwhile, led Telkom, Satra and the SA Vans Association (Sava) to court to oppose Telkom's refusal to supply facilities to Sava members on the grounds that certain Van services encroach on Telkom's exclusivity.

These problems, together with the four-year-old dispute between Telkom and the Internet industry over the right to provide Internet access, indicates the inadequacies of the infant regulatory structure put in place in 1996.

These failings are largely because the legislation and the emerging range of services and applications that can be offered by licence holders do not mesh.

Technological development, however, does not erode the value of regulating in the public interest, nor of regulating for the goal of universal service. Indeed the possibilities offered by technology serve only to strengthen the need for clear rules relating to specific objectives.

Excessive or inadequate regulation can inhibit market entry and integrated service provision. This, in turn, may result in the migration of economic activity elsewhere, which may adversely affect investment and the very same goals the regulation is aiming to achieve. If one accepts the unassailable assertion that technological convergence is posing clear and immediate challenges to effective regulation, it must follow that the proper role of the regulator and effect of the law in a liberalising telecoms sector needs to be re-evaluated in this light.

This necessitates a re-examination of national policy that justifies exclusivity for Telkom during the process of liberalisation. It also requires a reconsideration of the theory underpinning monopolies as deliverers of universal service .

There is, of course, no evidence that full liberalisation of the market will result in universal service either. Yet, historical arguments supporting a State monopoly to effect universal service are diluting daily .

Given the rapid growth of services and applications in the deregulated telecoms service sectors, such as Vans, questions need to be raised about the continued desirability of a monopoly provider, at least in so far as facilities are concerned.

Market and service expansion suggests that convergence will snap at the heels of the liberalisation process. Developing countries, like SA, will have to adapt existing regulatory approaches, or potentially lose out on the promised "leapfrog" capabilities and trading potential that new technology can offer. If SA does not critically examine its current position on voice and, at the very least, infrastructure exclusivity in favour of one player, it risks losing various opportunities for growth and investment .

Any such re-examination, however, needs to consider the crucial national goals of attaining universal access, promoting development and stimulating competition. These are imperatives that even a force as powerful as convergence cannot be allowed to diminish.

Tracy Cohen is a senior telecoms lecturer at the Graduate School of Public & Development Management, Wits University.