Infrastructure building needs to start right here, right now

Irisked the ire of this fine newspaper’s business editor and production editor by waiting until Finance Minister Tito Mboweni had delivered his Budget speech before submitting my column. I was hoping to find something noteworthy and uplifting about the tech and telecoms sector but, like pretty much all of his austere Budget, there was no good news.

I had actually begun to write this before our reluctant finance minister’s Budget this week, fairly confident that any crucial strategy and investments around the critical telecoms and technology industries would not be substantively dealt with in his speech. I was not wrong.

Both Mboweni and President Cyril Ramaphosa make reference to the importance of the internet industries – for want of a better way of putting it – and how critical these are to growth and development. But it is up to the Cabinet ministers to develop the legislation to kickstart the process.

Take the urgent need to license spectrum for cellular operators to make use of the frequencies needed for 5G networks. It is regularly mentioned by Ramaphosa, but we have effectively made next to no progress in the past 15 years.

Yes, 15 years is how long it has been since South Africa released more spectrum to the cellular operators. That was for 3G networks, which have been superseded by so many other newer technologies. So where is the urgency and the haste that you would expect from our Cabinet, and, in this instance, the communications department?

All we hear from the miscommunications ministry are delusional ideas about how to define laptops and tablets (but thankfully not smartphones anymore) as televisions to help the SABC earn enough money to carry on functioning. If it was in a Harry Potter book, it might be called the Ministry of Mysterious Non-happenings and Pointless Delays.

Seeing as our government is currently – and again – obsessed with infrastructure, I will explain it in terms of a road so that our respective Cabinet ministers can understand: if you have to drive your car on a sand road filled with potholes, not only does it create wear and tear on your car, it also slows you down and takes longer for you to travel the distance you wanted to. We may have good tarred roads in urban areas but the rest of the country #NotSoMuch.

If it was in a Harry Potter book, it might be called the Ministry of Mysterious Non-happenings and Pointless Delays

The internet was once called the information superhighway. It’s a useful analogy for understanding how quickly and effortlessly information can zoom around the net.

Realising this, most countries have created an autobahn (read: fast and cheap internet) that increases the speed of getting around and therefore trucks and cars (read: commerce and business practice) can move quickly and freely around. A faster highway means everyone can move faster. Put another way, faster internet upgrades everyone’s car from a two-door budget car to a German sedan – not only is it fast, the overall driving experience is also better.

Without fast and abundant broadband, no country can expect to be able to compete with other countries that have this essential infrastructure. Put another way, it’s easy to drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town on the tarred, well-maintained surface of the N1; it’s a lot harder if you decide to turn left and head off to a remote village somewhere in Free State (which sadly probably still has asbestos roofs). Give it 10 or 15 minutes and the tar runs out and you’re back on corrugated, difficult-todrive-on sand roads. That’s what slow internet is like. It slows everything down. It slows down your ability to get email, read the news, do your work and learn online.

Building new infrastructure certainly benefits the under-pressure construction industry, and ultimately filters down to us citizens. But we need to build the fibre network and roll out 5G, especially in rural areas, so that the whole country benefits. And can benefit immediately.

Why do our government, and the responsible ministers, simply not get this?

Toby Shapshak is the publisher of Stuff. co.za and Scrolla.Africa.