Cape Town executive mayor Patricia de Lille has announced a proposed budget of ZAR216 million (US$20.6 million) for the continued deployment of broadband services in the city.
De Lille was speaking at a Special Council Meeting for the tabling of the city’s draft budget.
She said in total the proposed operating expenditure budget is approximately ZAR28 billion (US$2.7 billion) while the capital expenditure budget would be just over ZAR6 billion (US$571 million).
The proposed budget is for the financial year starting beginning of July
“The city continues to give action to its infrastructure-led growth strategy by investing in the broadband telecommunication infrastructure programme,” she said.
She said the budget comes from internal and external services.
“This network already connects more than 140 city facilities and 43 Western Cape Government facilities via high-speed fibre and wireless connections,” said de Lille.
HumanIPO reported last month the City of Cape Town announced the signing of eight third party internet service provider (ISP) agreements to boost universal access in the area, with officials saying the fibre optic capacity was great enough to be leveraged by the private sector.
“This year we also saw the first commercial telecoms service providers start using this infrastructure to provide services to their clients – in line with the City’s objective to make spare capacity available in support of our economic development objectives,” de Lille said today, referring to the ISP agreements.
The city said last month another 20 agreements could be expected in the future.
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