The South African Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) has abandoned its plans to merge the .ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA), Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), and Film and Publications Board (FPB). This move marks the latest in a series of integration plans that have been started and ditched over the years. ZADNA announced this latest abandonment in its annual performance plan for the 2024/25 financial year.
According to ZADNA, the strategic realignment has been abandoned, and the organisation has been requested to pursue a DNS regulator. ZADNA’s position paper articulating this was submitted to DCDT after the board endorsed it.
The merger of the three organisations would have seen the regulatory functions of ICASA, the FPB, and ZADNA fall under one entity. ICASA regulates South African communications, broadcasting, and postal services sectors, while the FPB regulates films, games, and certain publications through classification. ZADNA, on the other hand, manages and regulates the .za namespace.
The department initially announced a plan to merge the department, ZADNA, ICASA, and the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA) in October 2017. The reason behind the merger was that the spread of regulation across the four entities resulted in overlapping and duplicating roles and a need for coordination between entities.
The department presented a new bill to create a “super-regulator” to regulate the ICT sector. The bill included regulating the electronic communications sector, internet governance, licensing and regulation of electronic communications networks and services, licensing and regulation of spectrum and other scarce resources, licensing and regulation of postal services, ex-ante competition regulation, protection of consumers, allocation and management of domain names, and establishment and operation of a tribunal to deal with appeals.
The department relaunched the plan two years later when then-communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams announced plans to merge ZADNA, ICASA, and the FPB. During her announcement, Ndabeni-Abrahams said her department was developing a “smart regulation” model in South Africa to integrate the three regulatory bodies. She also noted that DCDT would explore new funding mechanisms for the all-in-one regulator.
The DCDT affirmed the plan in a December 2020 announcement, saying it had embarked on a process to merge the entities in accordance with the state-owned enterprises rationalisation plan. The plan involved dissolving USAASA and transforming it into a standalone funding agency to support universal service and access.
However, the Internet Service Provider Association of South Africa (ISPA) raised concerns over the integration in January 2021, saying that great care would need to be taken to ensure that this does not disrupt at a time when there is massive growth in the industry and demand for infrastructure and services provided by it.
