In the last few weeks, I have been personally exposed to the chaos in the Israeli communications market.
It all started with my arriving home one day to discover workmen from the Partner communications company penetrating the communications infrastructure in the apartment building where I live – both underground, along the sidewalk outside, and inside the building, in the communications cabinets attached to each apartment.
The workers explained that they were spreading optic fibers, so that we shall all be able to enjoy fast Internet.
It should be pointed out that what we are talking about is the infrastructure of optic fibers, which the communications companies provide for free – not the connection of individual households to optic fiber services, which one purchases from these companies.
I pointed out to the Partner workers that Bezeq had already spread optic fibers in our building back in February 2021.
“Who gave you permission to spread your optic fibers in our building?” I asked.
“The house committee,” they answered.
“I am a member of the house committee, and I don’t know what you are talking about,” I replied.
I called up the workers’ boss, whose number they gave me, and he gave me the name of the committee member who allegedly had approved Partner’s entrance into the building and signed a document to this effect. It turned out to be an elderly woman who happened to be putting flower pots in the entrance lobby when they arrived. She explained that she believed that she was being asked to sign a paper allowing Partner to place a notice on the building’s bulletin board.
Be that as it may, Partner entered our building at its convenience, even though according to the Communications Law the communications companies are supposed not only to receive the approval of the majority of the apartment owners or the house committee to spread their networks in the building, but are also supposed to coordinate the time of their arrival with them/it.
The Partner workers not only made a mess in the building, but also broke the lock of the private communications cabinet of one of the apartments, even though the owners were at home at the time, and the workers could simply have rung the bell and asked their permission to open the cabinet. According to the Communications Law, Partner is liable to pay compensation for any damage it caused. In this case the damage was minimal, but angered the owners no end.
Around the same time, while taking a walk in my neighborhood, I discovered over a dozen workers, in brand-new Partner vests, opening the entrances to Bezeq’s underground communications channels and overground communications cabinets, all around the neighborhood, and peeping into them. When I jokingly asked their boss whether Partner had decided to invade our neighborhood, he reacted like someone caught out doing something he was not supposed to be doing, and instructed his workers not to talk to me.
It can very well be that Partner was not in breach of the law, and well within its rights, though I doubt it had coordinated its activities with Bezeq, but its conduct reflects the failure of the Communications Ministry, which last year (when Yoaz Hendel served as communications minister in the Netanyahu-Gantz government for the first time) announced its intention that within the policy of hastening the spread of optic fibers all over the country (Israel was way behind the rest of the industrial world in this), it sought to ensure that in each apartment building only a single company will be responsible for spreading optic fibers, and the other companies will be able to use these fibers for its own services for a charge.
The idea was that letting all the communications companies spread their own fibers in each building was financially wasteful and a serious nuisance to the inhabitants of the buildings, and the proposal was that the companies should collaborate in this and reach appropriate financial arrangements among themselves, and all this after Bezeq – the oldest and largest communications company in Israel, which for many years held a monopoly in this field – undertook to spread 80% of the optic fibers in the county within six years.
It turned out that the various companies did not manage to reach an agreement (we do not know whether they even tried) so that there is wild competition going on among them – at least in the center of the country, and in neighborhoods with many large apartment buildings.
Incidentally, this unbridled competition also reflects itself in the efforts of these companies to grab customers from each other.
The other day I received a phone call (on my Partner cellphone) from a representative of HOT, which provides me with TV services. He told me that they had received an application from me to connect to their Internet services.
I denied that I had contacted HOT on this matter or any other company. “I am perfectly satisfied with the service I receive from Bezeq International. They are available on the phone 24/7, answer immediately, and always solve my problem on the spot.”
The man from HOT continued to insist that I had filled out some form online, at which point I simply hung up. Incidentally, HOT’s TV technical services are nothing to write home about.
What all this suggests is that while free competition is certainly preferable to monopolies, at least in Israel free competition frequently is counterproductive, unless some order is introduced by means of government regulations. In this case, I believe that the ministry should have stated that unless the communications companies divide the market among themselves and agree to share their infrastructures with the other companies, it will do this itself. The current state of affairs is a nuisance.
The situation in the periphery requires another sort of intervention. When Bezeq undertook to spread optic fibers in 80% of the country, it undertook to do so also in part, but not the whole, of the periphery, which is not considered lucrative. The ministry is planning to offer financial incentives to companies, other than Bezeq, to enter the areas that are not covered by Bezeq. Hopefully this plan will be implemented – supposedly after the budget is passed.
There is an additional issue connected to optic fibers that should be mentioned.
When Arye Deri from Shas was still interior minister in the previous government, he blocked efforts by the Communications Ministry to ensure that in the future all new buildings will include optic fiber infrastructures, together with water and electricity infrastructures. Deri refused to sign regulations to this effect, because in the haredi community the Internet is forbidden (even though it is assumed that over half the haredi households are connected to the Internet).
On his last day as interior minister Deri signed the regulations with certain reservations, which exclude haredi cities from the regulations. It is believed that Hendel will try to get the current interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, to approve the regulations as originally proposed.
Another issue, which is apparently not connected to optic fibers, concerns unauthorized piratical Internet services provided within the Arab community in the north of the country. The Communications Ministry has approached the police to help it contend with the problem.
Hopefully, order will finally be introduced in the whole communications sector.
The writer was a researcher in the Knesset Research and Information Center until her retirement, and recently published a book in Hebrew, The Job of the Knesset Member – An Undefined Job, soon to be published in English by Routledge.