Address by the Honourable Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Dr Siyabonga Cwele, at SATNAC on ‘Ubiquitous Broadband – An enabler to transform lives’
Programme Director, Ms Talia Sanhewe,
Telkom CEO, Mr Sipho Maseko,
ICT industry leaders,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Members of the media,
Good morning.
It is great to be here at SATNAC on Spring Day 2014. Having endured the cold of winter, this season is traditionally used to prepare for brighter and sunnier days ahead. In many respects, you can say we are in the Spring of implementing South Africa Connect, the country’s broadband policy, strategy and plan.
Just this past weekend, on Saturday, we brought together 50 young girls from various disadvantaged schools around Port Elizabeth, as part of our Women’s Month initiative. Our aim was linked to today’s theme of ‘Ubiquitous Broadband – An enabler to transform lives.’ We wanted to open up the world of career opportunities that Broadband and other ICT products and services are capable of delivering. I must add that we certainly inspired many of them to consider careers in the ICT field. Who knows a future Telkom Centre of Excellence student may be among them.
We also introduced to the learners a young black woman from the Eastern Cape, Thuli Volwana, who, together with her business partner Sabelo Sibanda, has developed the Vuya, a low-cost, solar powered Android tablet. This is one example of entrepreneurship that has been enabled by Broadband. As the ANC government, we call on big business to join us in supporting small and medium sized enterprises in the ICT sector, especially those owned by previously disadvantaged entrepreneurs.
One of the key enablers for the faster rollout of broadband is to facilitate competition. Open access can lower the barriers to entry for new entrants and SMME’s. This can lead to lowering the cost to communicate which will stimulate adoption and usage of broadband services.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Government has long realised the immense potential of universal and accessible broadband to fight the triple threats of unemployment, poverty and inequality. This government has identified the sectors of ICT, Transport, Water and Energy as key to job creation.
We committed to ICT development in the New Growth Path (NGP), and more recently (2012) in the National Development Plan: 2030 (NDP). The two reports have identified broadband as a critical enabler of socio-economic development. The NDP incorporates a vision that spans the entire ICT ecosystem from supply to demand stimulation quite extensively, with a specific focus on E-Health, E-Government and E-Education. SITA will play a vital role in the online delivery of such services.
We have prioritized citizens-facing departments like Health, Education, Transport, Police Justice and Home Affairs to name a few in the rollout of online government services. Through SA Connect, the department will coordinate and support the roll-out of broadband infrastructure and services across the country, to achieve 100% broadband penetration by 2020. This will enable government to improve the quality of services it delivers to citizens and offer more services online.
Deepening our ICT skills, research capabilities and creating awareness about the transformative abilities of broadband is one way of ensuring that we radically transform our society. Skills development is at the heart of Digital Opportunity, one of the four pillars of SA Connect.
Since Cabinet adopted SA Connect in December 2013, we established the National Broadband Advisory Council to leverage the potential of partnerships between the private and public sectors, labour and civil society.
We also fast tracked the ICT Policy Review process to modernise our laws and regulations and to, most importantly, create certainty to investors in the sector. We aim to release an options document within two months that takes into account all the public responses we received to the Green Paper and additional research we have undertaken.
We expect to have a White Paper on Integrated ICT Policy by the end of this financial year, in March 2015. The Department, working with the regulator, Icasa, will seek to resolve spectrum shortage for network capacity in the short to media term. Over the past few months, we have met with government departments, government agencies and some private companies that have a role to play in the roll out of broadband.
Government’s investment in broadband is coordinated through the Strategic Integrated Project 15. The department is visiting all the provinces and working with municipalities through the SA Local Government Association to facilitate alignment of broadband activities across all spheres of government to SA Connect.
This alignment is crucial as we seek funding to connect 580 clinics, 4 444 schools, 182 police stations, and 572 other government offices in the medium term.This is the foundation for government’s plan to make broadband universally accessible and for its benefits to reach as many citizens as possible.
The benefits of universal and affordable broadband are now well understood:
- Research suggests that a rise in broadband penetration is linked to economic growth and job creation
- We know that broadband is increasingly regarded as a strategic infrastructure and that the economic and social benefits (network effects) to be enjoyed require a critical mass - eg: We acknowledge that some schools have internet connectivity. But it is of vital importance all schools be connected to the internet, at broadband speed.
We acknowledge the role the private sector has played in the role-out of school connectivity, and we hope to continue this public private partnerships into the future. As we accelerate the implementation of SA Connect to achieve universal access to broadband by 2020, these partnerships will become essential.
- It is essential in the creation of knowledge economies and information societies – a citizen in KwaZakhele Township should have the same access to broadband as someone in Sandton.
- It enables economic and social inclusion and can enhance democratic participation – it enables a more informed and proactive citizen
- It is a key determinant of global competitiveness.
- There is also increasing evidence that broadband enables broadening of educational opportunities, enhanced public service delivery and rural development.
An infrastructure gap-analysis study has indicated that there is a gap between the high-capacity backbone and access to network infrastructure. This gap is biggest in rural areas and in particular in former homeland states where the most marginalised communities live. There are also some urban areas with high population densities that remain unserved.
However, the real gap is in the last-mile or local loop infrastructure, while in metropolitan areas there is considerable duplication and potential under-exploitation of infrastructure due to these areas being commercially attractive to service providers. If this situation is not addressed, the Digital Divide - the gap between those who have access to services and those who don’t - will increase and consequently impede true economic growth.
The targets for broadband connectivity set by SA Connect takes into consideration the current low broadband penetration levels across South Africa. Baseline connectivity levels as measured in 2013 for schools and healthcare facilities were 25% and 13% respectively. The medium term targets of SA Connect require 50% of schools, health and government facilities to be connected at 10 Mbps by 2016.
To address this digital divide, government has found it necessary to consider a range of demand side and supply side interventions.
Supply side interventions to encourage investment and rollout of infrastructure include:
- Support for Public/Private investment initiatives
- Increase competition
- Expansion of Core/Access networks
- Enablement of infrastructure sharing
- Promotion of coordinated build programmes
- Allocation of prime spectrum to support universal access
To complement the supply chain, government has also determined a number of demand side interventions that seek to stimulate the uptake and usage of broadband services and products.
Demand side interventions also seek to promote skills development to ensure that users of broadband services are adequately trained to exact maximum benefit from the broadband infrastructure and services that are made available to them. The demand side interventions include:
- Increased affordability of services and devises
- Aggregation of government demand to enhance procurement
- Alignment of regulatory framework
- Development of ICT skills and e-literacy
- Development of local content, applications,
- Stimulations of niche manufacturing
Government’s intention is to invest in broadband infrastructure through aggregation of public sector demand and smart procurement of high capacity networks.
This government demand will give rise to sustainable business models which will further incentivise investment by network operators. This pooled public sector demand driven network could in future be transitioned and transferred into a wholesale open access network model once it is established.
Realising the benefit of aggregated demand requires the coordination of network procurement across government; and close coordination with the responsible departments and authorities to ensure that the specific requirements for different sectors are met.
The network requirements that will serve as part of the digital development strategy include:
- dedicated connectivity for all public health care facilities as not only a requirement for implementation of the National Health Insurance but to also generate efficiencies such as faster patient diagnoses, reduced medical errors, etc.
- dedicated connectivity for all schools to be used by teachers, learners, school administrators and other support staff for administrative, teaching and learning purposes aimed at harnessing the vast potential that broadband has to make education systems more efficient by helping teachers and administrators streamline routine tasks and improve learner assessment and data collection;
- an expanded public sector network that will provide high speed broadband connectivity to administrative sites and other facilities;
- Public WiFi to be made available at all public points reached by the public sector networks. This will stimulate demand by allowing people to access the Internet, including government services.
Albert Einstein said that “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” For the past 14 years SATNAC has been imagining the future and succeeding because of talented people like you.
Let me commend Telkom on its Centre for Learning programme that promotes postgraduate research focusing on the ICT industry. This is an initiative that produces favourable results for Telkom: stronger partnerships are formed with academia, government and industry; access to cutting edge research is obtained; and scarce skills are secured for the company. It is a laudable initiative and one I hope other companies across the business sector will adopt, especially given its mutually beneficial nature.
SATNAC is of course the annual culmination of the Centre of Learning programme, of which there are 16 centres across the country. This makes it one of the most significant coordinated research efforts in ICT in South Africa. Given the lightning speed with which this industry moves, it can only bode well for the industry to support such initiatives.
We have made significant progress but there is much more to do. We stand on the threshold of a digital revolution, one which we may never see again.
We have a unique opportunity, right now, to be the architects of the future of this great country. We must grasp this opportunity with both hands to move South Africa forward.
Thank you!
