Cabinet has approved the Broadband Policy for South Africa, with the objective of facilitating the provision of affordable, accessible, universal access to broadband infrastructure to citizens, business and government.
According to Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko, the policy highlights the role of government in infrastructure investment and identifies state-owned enterprises as key players in this investment.
The policy also sets targets with regard to broadband penetration. It introduces a Broadband Inter-Governmental Implementation Committee, to ensure various broadband initiatives in the three spheres of government are coordinated to reduce duplication.
Communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda indicated during his budget vote speech earlier this year that the policy would be approved by Cabinet. He also stated a key objective would be to provide broadband services to most of the population by 2019.
Cabinet also approved the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) amendment Bill for public consultation.
The law governing the telecommunications, broadcasting and postal regulator has been criticised since its first amended version was passed by the National Assembly five years ago. It was seen as being cumbersome and hampering ICASA's work.
Maseko says the purpose of the Bill is to amend the ICASA Act, in order to change the position of the chief executive officer to chief operations officer, and to differentiate between the functions of the council and the chief operations officer.
This change would allow for clearer lines of responsibility to be drawn between the CEO and the chairperson of the council, in order to meet the requirements of the Public Finance Management Act.
Maseko says the ICASA Bill aims to ensure the turnaround times of some of the responsibilities of the authority are improved.
“Furthermore, it seeks to change the composition of the council to include both executive and non-executive councillors. It proposes the creation of a Tariff Advisory Council. The amendment of the Act will strengthen the capacity of the regulator to regulate the ICT sector, to ensure the sector contributes to the growth of the South African economy,” Maseko says.
Cabinet also approved two new non-executive directors for national signal distributor Sentech, namely Dr NP Siswana and Ms LT Khumalo, for a period of three years with effect from June.
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