Accelerate rural networks via public-private partnerships

VODACOM’S long-term vision – to have the widest and best network accessible to all South Africans, irrespective of where they live – started years ago with substantial capital investments in our infrastructure.

To achieve this, it’s important that we invest in the rural and township areas as well as the cities to make sure nobody gets left behind. This is in line with the ideals that are envisaged by the National Integrated ICT Policy White Paper.

While Vodacom’s competitors are ramping up their capital spend to catch up to Vodacom in the urban areas, Vodacom has intensified its focus on rural areas, while we strive to maintain network leadership in urban areas.

In our considered view, and based on a fantastic project that we’ve just completed in Kwazulunatal, the best possible model that is going to help fast-track the deployment of networks in deep rural areas of South Africa is through public-private-partnerships (PPP).

I made this point during recent site celebrations where the Vodacom Zululand team handed over seven new base station sites to umhlabuyalingana Municipality.

The event was attended by the mayor, Nkululeko Mthethwa, as well as scores of people from this municipality, representatives from national and provincial governments, municipal councillors and Independent Communications Authority of SA’S Paris Mashile.

The project came about a year ago when Mthethwa wrote to Minister Siyabonga Cwele and Icasa requesting assistance in rallying network cellphone providers to build sites in the area to boost coverage for the deep rural areas.

In April 2017, Cwele approached the local mobile networks and appealed to them to improve network coverage along the border.

By delivering seven new sites to the community, Vodacom is the only cellphone provider to have responded.

Vodacom is in the business of transforming the lives of our people through the use of technology.

To execute the umhlabuyilangana project, we partnered with the national, provincial and local government and local business.

Working on this project has demonstrated that if we are to accelerate networks in deep rural areas across South Africa, mobile companies must rely heavily on

PPPS.

Network accessibility for people who reside in rural areas remains central to Vodacom’s commitment of extending network coverage to all South Africans, irrespective of class and economic status.

It is our firm view that broadband penetration has transformative power and is an enabler for economic and social growth and as such makes it an essential tool for empowering people in rural areas.

The World Bank study concludes that a 10 percentage-point increase in fixed broadband penetration could increase gross domestic product growth by 1.21% in developed economies and 1.38% in developing ones.

Vodacom has already achieved 99.9% urban and 99.6% of rural population voice coverage and 99.9% urban and 95.6% of rural population data coverage.

While this presents a tremendous achievement, we are now looking at innovative ways to connect the outstanding 4.4% of the rural population with data coverage and 0.4% with voice coverage.

What makes this challenging is poor available infrastructure and the very low population density, meaning that many base stations have to be built to cover the remaining rural areas.

Mthethwa spoke glowingly about this partnership: “The partnership with Vodacom should be celebrated for tackling the problem of lack of network connectivity in rural areas.

“Vodacom’s sites will help us to fight the rampant cross-border crime in our area and it is going to enhance service delivery as most citizens will now be able to use the Vodacom network to connect to the internet and access online government services.

“Furthermore, schools stand to benefit from this as connectivity will help improve pupils’ performance in critical subjects such as technology, mathematics and science.”

Mashile of Icasa says if more partnerships between networks and governments are explored more good will come out of it:

“The deployment of networks in rural areas will help to enhance socio-economic development in rural areas.

“Access to the internet will help rural dwellers access services such as ehealth, eeducation and ecommerce. Moreover, the council can build community centres where people can go to access education over the internet.

“This will be key to driving growth, to the benefit of people living in rural communities.”

The 2G voice traffic in the area has always been stable at around 2.55 million calls a week.

With the addition of the new sites and U900 (data) roll-out in the area, the 3G voice traffic has added another 800 000 calls, a 32% increase in voice traffic.

The 3G data traffic has added another 2TB (terabytes) – a 1 000% increase.

In the final analysis, it remains our firm view that broadband penetration has transformative power and is an enabler for economic and social growth. As such, it is an essential tool for empowering people in rural areas.

Thus the work we undertook in umhlabuyalingana taught us that to fast-track network deployment, we need government, business, labour and civic bodies to work together.

Mathinya is executive head of operations for Vodacom KZN.