Government's problem child, Sentech, has not been allocated any funding for its national broadband network over the next few years.
Sentech has been tasked with rolling out a national wholesale broadband network by government, to take broadband to the poor and expand into rural areas. However, the parastatal will not receive funding for the project in the next few years.
The Estimates of National Expenditure document, provided along with other budget documents to journalists in anticipation of finance minister Parvin Gordhan's budget speech this afternoon, shows that no funding has been set aside over the next three years.
This, explains a National Treasury official, who cannot be named, is because Sentech has not spent the R500 million it was allocated in 2007/8 on the project, and the funding is still sitting in the parastatal's bank account.
Sentech was recently the focus of a task team investigation, which found it was in a dire financial situation and questioned management's ability to lead the parastatal.
TV delays
However, Sentech will receive R270.9 million in the coming financial year and R279 million in 2011/12 for digitisation. In the year after that, it will receive R167 million.
digital and analogue signal, while the country gets ready to switch over to digital.
However, while the deadline to achieve this goal was initially set for November next year, it has now been put on hold indefinitely, because the industry is not ready for the switchover. The international deadline to move to a digital signal, set by the International Telecommunications Union, is 2015.
About 60% of the country should, by now, have been covered by a digital signal broadcast by Sentech, but this is not the case, and only 33% of the country has been covered, says the treasury official.
The delay in extending coverage has been attributed to the fact that the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) must first wrap up the regulations and frequency spectrum plan.
However, on Monday, ICASA published its finalised Digital Migration Regulations, which saw the switchover date being pushed out. Alongside the regulations, it published a “reasons document” indicating that industry is not ready for the switchover.
The Universal Services Fund has been allocated R180 million in the new financial year to provide set-top boxes. This forms part of government's R2.45 billion subsidy to partially pay for boxes to the poorest households.
However, the treasury official indicates this programme has also met with delays.
The Department of Communications convened a summit on set-top box manufacturing with the aim of developing an electronics sector, towards the end of last year. A conformance scheme is expected to be concluded in September, which will be in line with ICASA's regulations to ensure quality of locally manufactured boxes.
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