Broadband roll-out too slow

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 02 Mar 2009

Government is not doing enough to speed up the roll-out of e-government services, says eThekwini Municipality head of geographic information systems and city strategy Jacqui Subban.

Subban, who will speak at this year's eGovernment Conference, hosted by ITWeb, says there is no collective country strategy for the roll-out of broadband services, and the government has placed too much on the private to deliver these capabilities.

“In my view, I think national government should have taken the view that was taken in countries such as India, Malaysia and South Korea,” says Subban. “In these countries they invested heavily in broadband infrastructure down to the level where the man in street could get access.”

Subban adds that broadband services are needed because the world is moving into a knowledge economy and all economic sectors and activities require communication over broadband. Social networks, communication systems and education services demand broadband to operate effectively.

“If people are excluded from the new way of working in the world, they will be the poorer for it.”

Challenges

There are a number of challenges facing the roll-out of broadband services, says Subban, primarily from legislation in terms of the telecommunications front and the municipal finance and governance side.

“While the former has been more responsive, the legislative environment is not wholly-supportive of the delivery process.”

The other challenges faced in rolling out broadband services lie in the lack of understanding of the need for such infrastructure and the collective resources required to make broadband infrastructure cheaply available.

“Compared to other developing countries, we are lagging behind in the delivery side. Perhaps we have not grasped the importance of this infrastructure to the economy.”

Going nowhere slowly

“Thus far, the roll-out programme has been next to non-existent,” states Africa Analysis analyst Dobek Pater.

Government has allocated certain funds to its chosen vehicle for broadband infrastructure deployment, namely Sentech, yet so far only a portion of the estimated required funding has been allocated, he adds.

In addition, Infraco has been deploying and readying its national transmission network, but there is little news as far as an access network is concerned.

Pater says there are a number of questions government needs to ask itself in terms of rolling out broadband, including: what constitutes an affordable price for broadband services to the under-serviced? And has a concept been developed on who exactly will provide retail broadband services to the under-serviced?

“It is likely that the government's plans will become superfluous as broadband services become more and more affordable to larger segments of our society.”