Cabinet is due to peruse three Department of Communications (DOC) policies next week. These are the broadband, set-top box (STB) manufacture and standards policies; the latter two ahead of schedule, says a DOC spokesperson.
Yesterday, DOC spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso told ITWeb, after a Parliamentary media briefing by the infrastructure development cluster of ministries, that the policies, once approved by Cabinet, should put these projects back on track.
“The policies dealing with STB manufacture and standards are at least a month ahead of schedule,” he said.
SA started its migration from analogue to digital TV at the end of 2008 and this was supposed to be completed by November 2011. However, this deadline has been postponed indefinitely. This is due to a number of factors, such as national signal distributor Sentech not receiving adequate funding, questions about how and who will manufacture the STBs, and the lack of STB standards.
STBs are the units that are needed to convert a digital TV signal for display on an analogue TV set. Government wants to pay a subsidy to those who qualify of up to 70% of the price of the unit, which may cost as much as R700. Most of this funding is expected to come from the Universal Service and Access Fund.
Rikhotso said the Universal Service and Access Agency will still be the designated government agency to administer and disburse the money.
As for broadband policy, the DOC said in its briefing notes that the cluster of ministries responsible for infrastructure development (which also includes the ministries of public enterprise and transport), would strive to increase broadband penetration from 2% to 5% of the total South African population. This would increase the number of people who are able to access broadband services by 1.4 million.
Rikhotso says the broadband policy, which Cabinet has to approve, will have an updated definition of broadband and will aim at increasing access speeds.
Short on detail
Broadband Infraco's trumpet was also sounded during the briefing, with the statement saying the state-owned enterprise now has 11 800km of fibre-optic cable under its control. It also stated that interconnections to Botswana and Mozambique had been successfully completed, and interconnections between Zimbabwe and Namibia were nearing completion.
The quality of Broadband Infraco's network had also been increased to achieve availability levels of 99.95%. However, a question to public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan about the age and quality of the fibre-optic network was not answered.
The statement also talked about a “study” that claims the availability of Broadband Infraco's national network has had a significant impact on telecommunications wholesale prices. But no details of this study were released.
Broadband Infraco's investment in the West African Cable System was reaffirmed, but again, questions about its shareholding and investment went unanswered.
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