West Coast Cable ready by May 2010

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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In her budget vote speech today the Minister of Communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, said that South Africa is still facing challenges to increase the uptake and usage of communications technologies and reduce the cost of access to these technologies.

Matsepe-Casaburri however warned that reducing the cost of communications without increasing available infrastructure will reduce the quality of communications to undesirable levels.

“Greater investments in infrastructure, open access principles on essential infrastructure and greater but fairer competition on services as well as effective yet flexible regulation, will lead to greater cost benefits and good service,” Matsepe-Casaburri said,

The minister said that Government has committed themselves to benchmarking against the best with respect to the costs to communicate, quality, access to services, high uptake and usage of ICTs.

Undersea cables

The minister pointed out that in a further attempt to bring costs down, the government has approved the building of the African West Coast Cable (A.W.C.C.) undersea cable, with Infraco at the lead.

Government further gave support to the NEPADs UhuruNet led by Baharicom as well as the UmojaNet terrestrial project.

“Both undersea cables should be ready by May 2010 and will create a sustainable competitive international bandwidth market in South Africa, the region and the continent and is in line with the President’s SONA statement on operationalizing that project in partnership with other governments and the private sector,” said Matsepe-Casaburri.

“Following discussions with partners in Nigeria, UHURUnet is due to be operational by May 2010. Discussions on collaborations with partners in Kenya will lead to the east coast also being completed by the end of 2010.”

The minister said that together with Seacom and EASSy, these initiatives will create a sustainable competitive international bandwidth market in South Africa, the region and the continent.

Undersea cable discussion