The South African government’s Department of Communications announced in August 2011 a Broadband for all by 2020 in South Africa. The policy was to ensure that 100 percent of South Africans get access to broadband speed of less than 2.98 kbps.
Broadband for all however is still a pipe dream to the many people South Africans. In 2011, Vodafone promised a 1mbps broadband access for South Africans.
SA’s communications minister Dina Pule said in her 2012 communications budget vote speech that the Department of Communications remains committed to delivering 100 percent broadband penetration by 2020 and delivering a million jobs by 2020.
Though Pule insisted that rolling out a national broadband network was her department’s prioritized flagship programmes to make SA a knowledge and digital information society, full coverage was not going to happen by 2020 if it’s just government putting up the money.
According to pule, Government doesn’t have enough money to roll out the necessary infrastructure on its own,but needed the help private sector to achieve their goal.
Pule said she had conducted earlier surveys and the broadband for all was estimated to cost around R60 billion and R89 billion which will also see them create more than 200,000 jobs.
Although it has been argued that many studies have been done by several industry players, according to Pule, a new broadband strategy was being drafted and would be available in the next three months. The study will reveal SA’s broadband coverage, penetration and speed.
Contrary to Pule’s defence of the new study, the former Communications minister conducted various studies and even did international peer benchmarking studies to assess the pricing, speeds and penetration levels of broadband in South Africa.
The former minister even tabled the August 2011 e-Barometer report in before parliament and had precise details and statistics like fixed line penetration rates, broadband penetration rates, Internet penetration rates, broadband coverage and bandwidth per inhabitant.
The R60- to R89-billion will be used to build a telecommunications broadband network throughout the country and to reduce connectivity costs.
Although Pule is confident about the impact of the Broadband for All in SA such as easy access to public services such as e-learning, e-health and e-government.
Broadband Commission for Digital Development survey done by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) ranks South Africa among the countries with fastest broadband speeds. In Panama, fixed broadband is having a significant economic impact. Analysis of a structural econometric model for the period 2000-2010 indicates that fixed broadband now contributes an annual 0.44 percent of GDP, with the indirect effects of fixed broadband use estimated to have contributed almost 9.6 percent of total national economic growth.
Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri then a communications minister in her 2005-budget vote speech said her department was led other relevant departments in addressing the question of increasing both the affordable access to and use of broadband.
Five years later, former communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda came with the same promise by 2019 and in his communications budget vote speech said: “We have finalized the Broadband policy whose vision is to ensure that South Africans have universal access and services to broadband by 2019.”
However, South Africans know not much has changed since 2006. And at the recent “National Integrated ICT Policy Colloquium aimed at creating a platform for the ICT industry to review the Department’s ICT policies” hosted by the DoC to review the availability, accessibility and affordability of broadband,”
South Africans argue that the DoC engages in “endless consultation and consensus-seeking” while many opportunities pass South Africa by.
According to Netindex, Ghana currently has download speeds of up to 5.14 Mbps, ranking it 73rd in the world closely followed by Kenya with 4.94 Mbps, Angola with 4.53 Mbps, Rwanda with 3.28 Mbps and Zimbabwe and South Africa with 2.98 Mbps. On the contrary, the US now has 100 million homes connected to internet speeds of 100mbps.
Sentech and Broadband Infraco were among the government owned corporations that collaborated to roll out the network across the country.
