Government facilities to get internet connections

THE government has embarked on a strategy to connect state facilities to the internet, and the tender for the first phase of the project will be finalised in October.

The project will be rolled out in two phases during which 6,135 facilities — including schools, clinics, post offices and other government institutions — will be connected in eight district municipalities in phase one, and 35,211 facilities will be connected in 44 municipalities in phase two.

Aggregating the government’s demand for broadband in this way will achieve economies of scale.

Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services deputy director-general Tinyiko Ngobeni said in Parliament on Tuesday that funding remained a challenge.

For the first phase, the department received R336m in the current financial year, R174m less than requested. It was allocated R444m and R764m for the next two years — R237m and R43m lower than requested, respectively.

In total, R1.5bn has been allocated over the medium-term expenditure framework against the R1.9bn that was requested.

The tender — issued by the State Information Technology Agency for the first phase — closed on August 8 and was under evaluation, Ngobeni said. “The phase-two business case was developed and submitted to National Treasury for funding. The department is working with Treasury to unblock the funding issue.”

Ngobeni told MPs that the Cabinet had approved the establishment of a “broadband war room” to accelerate the implementation of the SA Connect strategy to roll out broadband across the country.

Several government departments would be represented in the war room, and the economic cluster was finalising its terms of reference. It would focus on unblocking challenges in rolling out the SA Connect strategy, which aimed to achieve 100% broadband coverage at 10Mbps and 80% at 100Mbps by 2030. Provincial steering committees were set up to drive the rollout in their regions.

Ngobeni said SA was still challenged in terms of the accessibility, usability and affordability of broadband. Since its introduction in 2003, the broadband take-up had mainly been wireless and mobile. Access to the internet and broadband services were not uniform across the country, he said.

SA’s ranking in terms of the World Economic Forum Global Competitive Index for 2016 improved to 49 from 56 in terms of information and communications technology. The readiness of its network in terms of infrastructure, digital content and affordability improved from 75 to 65.

Government usage, however, needed to increase, Ngobeni said.