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Rural connectivity progressing at 'snail's pace'

Bonnie Tubbs
By Bonnie Tubbs, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 18 Jun 2015
SA is headed towards bridging the digital divide, but at a snail's pace - rather than the sprint that is needed.
SA is headed towards bridging the digital divide, but at a snail's pace - rather than the sprint that is needed.

Despite grand ICT plans and promises, ongoing delays and a failure to deliver have set back economic progress in SA by as much as a decade.

Digital migration, spectrum allocation and the failure to provide an enabling environment are only some of the issues lending this credence.

This is according to industry watchers, on the back of telecoms and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele's latest address - at the 16th African Telecommunications Union Administrative Council session in Durban yesterday - in which he highlighted the criticality of bridging SA's long-standing urban-rural digital divide.

While huge strides have been made in bolstering SA's terrain with ICT access, analysts say this is more in spite of government than because of it, with industry stepping up to the plate where the state has failed to.

Critical year

Cwele yesterday dubbed 2015 "a critical year of action", citing the Millennium Development Goals, migration from analogue to digital broadcasting, the World Summit on Information Society, and upcoming World Radiocommunication Conference as critical ICT events.

He said colonial oppression in Africa left society divided - socially, economically and digitally. "In our bid to redress the injustices of the past, we must work tirelessly to bridge the rural and urban digital divide in a bid to create an inclusive information society."

Millenium Development Goals

The Millenium Development Goals are eight international development goals established by the United Nations in 2000, whereby signatories - including SA - committed to help achieve certain goals by 2015, including:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a global partnership for development.

Internet access, said Cwele, was the "single most powerful tool we have to ensure we are a truly inclusive society".

He stressed the importance of ICT infrastructure as "the lifeblood of economic development", saying this could not be downplayed, and positioned SA's broadband policy - SA Connect - as being the foundation to strengthening the supply side of the broadband value chain and encouraging the uptake of broadband, specifically by rural communities.

Painfully slow

ICT expert Adrian Schofield says, while SA may be moving in the right direction when it comes to making broadband more affordable and accessible, this is at a snail's pace, rather than a sprint.

"The government has great plans to improve rural (and township) access to broadband, but we need to see the day-by-day, month-by-month progress towards the targets. It is not just the fibre network that needs to be rolled out, it is the 3G and LTE [long-term evolution] networks, too."

Schofield adds the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) is hamstrung by government's failure to complete the digital migration programme, constraining SA's mobile networks in turn.

Democratic Alliance shadow minister of telecoms and postal services, Marian Shinn, says rural areas are hugely neglected. "[For example,] the Thusong Centres, under the Department of Communications, were a great idea to bring Internet connectivity to rural areas at multi-purpose centres managed by municipalities. [However,] during oversight visits to many of these during the previous Parliament, we rarely found a working Thusong centre."

Shinn says the ICT sector lacks clarity from government on its rural connectivity plans, particularly as announced by president Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation Address.

"It's been exceptionally difficult to get, from Cwele, the detailed scope and budget for the eight rural municipalities' connectivity. He has established regional hubs in these areas to get an understanding of the communities' needs - which sounds like the first steps of a project rather than a project under way to deliver an impressive number of connected sites within the next nine months.

"If this rural rollout is to be done via the state entities like the State IT Agency, ICASA and Broadband Infraco [as suggested by Cwele in Parliament yesterday], it will miss deadlines and not be the most cost-effective solution."

She says government cannot undertake rural broadband rollout alone. "It doesn't have the capacity, skills level, sense of urgency or agility to deliver the appropriate, sustainable open access communications solutions. It should be a facilitator, not a player."

Industry action

Telecoms and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele yesterday dubbed 2015 "a critical year of action".
Telecoms and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele yesterday dubbed 2015 "a critical year of action".

Industry players are to thank for the access South Africans have today, with coverage close to 100%, say analysts. World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says government "is not really involved" in initiatives that are under way in SA to connect the masses, like Project Isizwe, Neotel's Western Cape initiative and Johannesburg's broadband project.

"Government tends to claim credit anyway, but these things are happening despite their efforts. We haven't seen them coming to the party - it is the non-governmental organisations and industry players that are playing a big role in connecting SA, but with very little support from government. If anything, government makes it more difficult by not creating an enabling environment."

The initiatives government does embark on, says Goldstuck, are "patchwork" projects, which do not amount to scalable solutions. He says SA needs something along the lines of the US' New Deal or Europe's Marshall Plan - two of history's most significant strategies that helped the nations recover from the devastating events World War II and the Great Depression.

"We need that kind of concept for broadband in SA. We need a big vision and big, bold plans. SA Connect may be geared towards that in terms of intentions, but not implementation."

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