A surplus amount of R374 million is being spent by government on broadband connectivity for 1 650 public schools.
The money, left over from the 2010 Fifa World Cup soccer tournament, was earmarked in February's budget, and has now been appropriated by the Department of Communications. A National Treasury official, who cannot be named due to the department's policy, says this cash was rerouted after not being spent on the games.
Telkom received a R950 million government guarantee to build an access network for stadiums. However, the official explains it was more efficient than expected, leading to a R374 million surplus, which is now being spent on connecting schools.
The project includes spending R300 million on wireless access networks, with the balance going into local area networks. In addition, 700 schools will get laptops, says the official.
The official explains the project is around three-quarters complete already. There are around 24 000 public schools in SA and the funding for ICT has been earmarked from national coffers.
A similar project to connect schools in Gauteng, at a cost of R2.5 billion, has been plagued by controversy. Gauteng Online aimed to equip all of the province's schools with broadband, as well as laptops, but the network aspect has since been assimilated into the province's broadband project, G-Link.
Gauteng Online started in 2001 and moved from the education department to the Gauteng Shared Services Centre, in 2007. However, several milestones and deliverables have been delayed.
SMM Telematics Consortium, which is now Cloudseed, won the initial tender. Despite the issues concerning delivery, it has since been granted a R107 million contract to provide connectivity for the project, now called the e-Learning Solution.
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