The Proprietors, Executives, and directors of SEACOM,
Ladies and gentlemen
I am honoured to be present here tonight as a guest of SEACOM.
SEACOM's undersea fibre-optic cable indeed marks a new era for the telecommunications industry in South Africa and Africa as a whole. It is an occasion for celebration because undersea fibre-optic cables accelerate the broadband telecommunications revolution promised for Africa.
Connecting southern and eastern Africa to the rest of the world via Europe and India will have a much wider social, cultural, political, and economic development impact on our country, the African continent and a globalised world.
International connectivity has been a missing link in the broadband communications supply chain. With the arrival of SEACOM's project, a clearer picture is emerging of the undersea telecommunications cable map of Africa.
Our goal of 'together making information and communications technologies (ICTs) relevant to the majority of our people' can only be realised through effective partnerships. Therefore, the contribution of SEACOM as a social partner is highly valued. The government and the Department of Communications (DoC) will ensure that sustainable platforms of engagement are strengthened to ensure that all stakeholders play a significant role in driving the strategic objectives of the DoC.
In his 2009 budget speech to Parliament, Minister of Communications, Siphiwe Nyanda, highlighted the need for the lowering of telecommunications costs and enabling broader Internet access by the majority population.
I am pleased to note that SEACOM is passionately pursuing the e-inclusive initiative by driving down the cost to communicate and increasing broadband speed and access.
If the information is correct, I was informed that your project has had a significant impact already on the cost of international bandwidth in South Africa (international bandwidth costs on a per mega-bite-per-second basis have decreased by an estimated (80%) since the initial announcement of SEACOM).
Just imagine the transformative impact a countrywide broadband footprint would have on our people, particularly if it follows in the footsteps of the postal services with its country wide infrastructure which provides access to South Africans, even in the remotest of areas.
Whilst SEACOM and other similar undersea cables would bring us the much needed broadband international connectivity, this must be complemented by the rolling out of a domestic backbone of new fibre-optic networks criss-crossing the country reaching every corner of our country.
According to the World Bank, only 21% of Africa's population lives within 10 kilometres of fibre-optic signals (node or distribution point). However, this scenario is about to change, in conjunction with the arrival of the latest undersea cables, a series of new fibre-optic networks is emerging across the African continent. Urban networks like the one now crisscrossing Johannesburg, known as metropolitan area networks, are emerging in major African cities like Cape Town, Durban, Mombasa, Nairobi, Kampala, Lagos and so forth. These in turn are becoming the hubs for broader national and regional backbones.
SEACOM's undersea cable would contribute greatly to us as a country by accelerating our transition to the knowledge and information based economy. Enabling broadband connectivity on a broader scale would bring to the fore the latent and hidden talent within the valleys and hills of our country. Recently I represented the DoC at the World Summit Award (WSA) Winners' Conference in Mexico, an agency of the United Nations' World Summit Information Society. The WSA recognises and rewards those who contribute by way of design and content development to the various media platforms.
Although I was disappointed that South Africa was not amongst the forty winners in the eight categories, the occasion filled me with great hope that our country most certainly has the potential to produce winners in content development and design in the foreseeable future. We are a country rich in content and have so many colourful stories to tell and share with the rest of the world.
But I believe that your project will connect more of our citizens and pull in more creative talent from amongst those who would be connected to the Internet and cyberspace in the future. Greater broadband access would bring to the fore this vast pool of enormous untapped creative talent.
Your project would undoubtedly contribute to broadening the goal passionately driven by the Department of Communications to leverage Information Communication Technologies for economic growth and development of all our people.
It is only when we as a collective accelerate the transition and transformation to the knowledge based-economy that our people would be able to set the international benchmark and best practice for inventiveness, ingenuity, competitiveness, productivity, and widespread wealth creation and prosperity of all South Africans.
SEACOM's undersea fibre-optic cable came on stream timeously, and it should be seen as one of the goal scoring opportunities made good on ahead of FIFA's 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Source: Department of Communications
