Cheaper Internet bandwidth will probably be regulated in a new Bill before Parliament or as an amendment to the Telecommunications Act, says minister of science and technology, Mosibudi Mangena.
"Some people say bandwidth in SA costs 13 times more than other countries and this is not good for the overall development of science and technology in the country," the minister told ITWeb at Microsoft SA`s Project Firefly software competition in Port Elizabeth this week.
Mangena says his department, along with the Department of Communications and the Department of Trade and Industry, are co-operating with each other to find ways to reduce the cost of bandwidth in the country.
"It is critical the cost comes down. One very important science project is the Square Kilometre Array telescope project that we are bidding for, and that will need a lot of bandwidth."
While the various government departments are discussing such legislation, Mangena could not say exactly when next year such legislation could be tabled.
The Square Kilometre Array is a $1 billion international project that will create a telescope that has a receiving surface of about one million square metres. The surface will consist of peripheral antennas, some situated about a 1 000km away from the core area, which has to be located in a remote place.
Eventually some of the receiving antennas will be positioned from between 5 000km and even possibly 10 000km away. Such a telescope would require huge computing and network capacity.
SA is bidding against the US, China and Australia, while Argentina and Brazil are also preparing bids.
"It is also imperative that people have cheap access to the various forms of information available on the Internet from research being done in other parts of the country and around the world, and access to government information," Mangena says.