The man who set South Africa’s telecommunications market free

During his almost 27 years as Altech CEO, and in his tennis career before that, Craig Venter achieved many victories and suffered many losses.

Arguably the greatest victory during his time leading one of South Africa’s top technology groups was winning a major court case that kicked down the door for the telecommunications industry.

The win opened up the sector to private investment and ushered in an era of fierce competition that ultimately shattered Telkom’s state-protected monopoly.

Venter is the younger of two sons from Altron founder Bill Venter’s first marriage. Altech was Altron’s high-tech subsidiary. Venter’s older brother, Robbie, tragically passed away last year at 64.

Like his brother, Venter studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a full tennis scholarship.

In his years on the UCLA Bruins tennis team, Venter won the NCAA team tennis championships twice (1982 and 1984), was named an Individual Tennis All American twice, and served as captain.

He broke UCLA’s record for most doubles dual match victories in a season in 1983 — a record he held for years.

Venter earned degrees in economics and psychology and went on to obtain his MBA from the University of Southern California in 1988.

He returned to South Africa and stepped into the role of Altech CEO, which included the company’s Netstar vehicle tracking business. He also oversaw the launch of Altech Autopage Cellular, which was a successful venture for the company.

It was thanks to Altech’s interests in telecommunications that Venter decided to cross swords with the late former communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

The Altech Case

Known as “The Altech Case” in the industry, though several other parties became involved, the issue began with the modernisation of South Africa’s laws governing telecommunications.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was being replaced with the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) of 2005, which included a total overhaul of the network operator licensing regime.

Under the old law, there were many licences for different types of networks. These included licences for public-switched telephone services, mobile networks, international telecommunications services, and private telecommunications networks.

For everyone else, there was the Value Added Network Service (VANS) licence.

The law also explicitly stated that only Telkom was allowed to operate a local access network until the Minister of Communications said otherwise.

The ECA abolished this system in favour of one that was simpler and more future-proof, with two different licence types and two licence classifications — four combinations in total.

The two licence types can be summarised as a network infrastructure (ECNS) and service (ECS) licence. The classifications are individual (I) and class licences (C), which nowadays correspond to a national or regional licence.

Therefore, an I-ECNS licence would grant a company permission to build and operate its own physical infrastructure nationally — something previously restricted to a handful of companies like Telkom, Neotel (now Liquid), Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C.

There was also a mechanism for converting old licences to the new regime. This was to facilitate the so-called “managed liberalisation” of South Africa’s telecommunications sector.

Under Matsepe-Casaburri’s direction, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) published a list of VANS licensees who would be converted to one of the new I-ECNS licences.

Altech was not on Matsepe-Casaburri’s list — something Venter did not take too kindly to. The company launched a legal challenge, arguing that all VANS licences should be automatically converted.

The case dragged on until August 2008, when the Pretoria High Court ruled in favour of Altech and all other VANS.

Matsepe-Casaburri elected not to appeal. By November of that year, Altech’s win was final. ICASA had to convert all VANS licensees to I-ECNS licences.

The minister’s capitulation meant Altech and about 300 other voice and data carriers could all build their own network infrastructure.

Fibre boom in South Africa

As a result of the victory, South Africa’s telecommunications industry boomed.

Although the impact wasn’t immediate, a vibrant and fiercely competitive broadband infrastructure sector emerged over the next decade.

A watershed moment was when Vumatel broke ground in Parkhurst in 2014.

While a few small private fibre network operators were already active at the time, these were predominantly rolling out in more affluent estates and gated communities.

These also generally focused on “greenfield” residential complexes that were still under construction — including Venter’s own Altech Technology Concepts division.

However, Vumatel and Parkhurst showed that the models being used to determine the financial feasibility of suburban fibre rollouts were flawed.

Parkhurst also proved there was consumer demand by running a survey among community members, and showed there were many operators willing to build them a network by accepting bids through a tender.

It ignited a craze among South Africa’s leafy suburbs. Several had soon published their own tenders.

However, it soon became unnecessary for neighbourhoods to get fibre network operators’ attention this way. A fibre landgrab ensued.

By March 2019, just under five years after Parkhurst, Vumatel had overtaken Telkom’s Openserve as the largest fibre-to-the-home provider in South Africa in terms of homes passed.

Telkom’s fixed-line monopoly was over — all thanks to Venter’s boldness more than a decade earlier.

After Altech

Venter stepped down from Altech in 2015 as the company moved away from being a family-run business.

He launched a sports betting company a year later, ClickaBet, which he sold to SportPesa on 1 June 2018.

Today, Venter runs an e-commerce digital solutions and management consultancy out of Johannesburg.