Exclusion of South African Rural Communities from Digital Communication Podia: A Regulatory Conundrum

Abstract This article reports on a study that examined how SA Connect (i.e., the South African broadband policy that was approved in 2013) has sought to integrate rural South Africans into the digital communication podia. The study drew from a major recent study focusing on selected themes as captured in SA Connect. Furthermore, it interrogated the current configurations of the South African telecommunications market and the role of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) in levelling the playing field within the sector. Located within the terrain of telecommunications policy and regulation, the study interrogated the interplay between mobile operators and ICASA in expediting broadband penetration into rural South Africa. Theoretically, the study was guided by the tenets of the knowledge gap theory as proposed by Philip Tichenor, George Donohue and Clarice Olien in 1970 and the principles of universal access within the context of the broadband ecosystem. The findings showed that an unreconstructed and predisposed skewed urban market as well as the indecisive regulator stance led to failure to reduce the digital divide. Thus, despite relentless attempts to address these challenges at policy level, South African rural areas remain excluded from the digital communication podia, subsequently causing digital inequality. The findings confirmed critical perspectives on digital inclusion which maintain that, the more information is circulated through the new conduits of information technology, the more communities from the low economic stratum of society are excluded from the information society and participation in the digital economy.