Tshwane to issue a private telecoms services tender

[gljackson]

Johannesburg - In a bid to increase high-speed internet access to its citizens at an affordable rate, the Tshwane municipality would issue a private telecommunications network (PTN) services tender in the next six months, Tshwane's digital hub manager, Charles Kunn, said yesterday.

Tshwane was awarded a PTN (government-to-government) telephone licence about four years ago. Through the network, Tshwane had saved about 80 percent in telephone costs, which was estimated at between R30 million to R50 million a year, Kunn said.

Tshwane citizens stood to benefit from the project as they would be able to have wireless internet connectivity using the city's private network, he said. The PTN also allowed companies to offer voice-over-internet and video conference services.

Kunn said the network was confined to the municipality offices but would now be extended to citizens to support the city's global digital hub programme. Tshwane's PTN service connects about 250 municipality offices, while its global digital hub programme has 14 000 corporate and about 2 million individual and small to medium business clients.

"We want citizens to have access to high-speed internet service [at an affordable rate]," he said, adding that this would also help the city's economic growth to accelerate.

It was still unclear how much the project would cost but Kunn said it would be a "substantial" amount.

Fixed-line monopoly Telkom's revenue would be hit hard as municipalities such as Knysna planned to offer cheaper telecoms services to their communities through private networks. Other cities such as Cape Town also planned to roll out such affordable services.

The State Information Technology Agency (Sita) said last year that it would conduct a PTN pilot study to enable it to supply cellular and fixed-line services to government employees, local authorities and municipalities.

Sita said that the PTN programme could save the government about R400 million a year on telephone costs. The government's telephone bill was estimated at R1.2 billion a year.

Sita's PTN pilot study would run through the government common core network (GCCN), which would be the conversion network for PTN traffic. GCCN is a multiservice network capable of carrying voice, video and data traffic.

Sita said that it would partner with Belgian firm Cipal to provide a telecoms network to Thabo Mofutsanyane municipality in the Free State.

Another article by Thabiso Mochiko
Lets hope this one is more accurate.

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3060598

 

[steev]

Isn't this what we've all been waiting for?

Hi is it just me, or doesn't this constitute the single biggest breaktrough for broadband in South Africa?

I mean when local municipalities bypass Telkom and bring WiMax creating a huge "local hub" like a massive LAN? and how long before we connect these lan together between major cities? The biggest barrier to entry for any competition to telkom is the infrastructure right? but all of the first tier ISP's have "wire" from major cities, it would just be a process of upgrading as the demand requires. We would just need big local servers to cache the "heavy" content and we will all be similing!

As for the 6 month time frame, i think it is ambitious, but fantastic if they can do it. I have always thought WiMax would be the key for south africa, because its range of 50km would bypass telkoms infrastructure. It would just need some key investment into the "portals" from the private (meaning not Telkom) networks to the www, but as i said the foundation is there for IS, UUNET, MTNNS etc.

just a quick technical update of WiMax
IEEE 802.16 Specifications Summary:

Point-to-multipoint broadband microwave access
Range: 50 km (30 mile) radius from tower
Speed: up to 70 Mbit/s
Frequency Bands: 2 to 11 GHz and 10 to 66 GHz (licensed and unlicensed bands)

The only problem is the speed of implimentation, with Intel projecting WiMax compatible notebooks in 2007

 

[neio]

Good for Pretoria.

 

[krycor]

So lemme get this straight.. the gov will allow themselves to set-up private networks to save them money this way rather than do the obivous and save everyone money ? I mean sure it will save people money and make them some too, but i find it odd the way they go about it.

 

[TheRoDent]

Thabiso should not be allowed near a computer or a pen.

Kunn said the network was confined to the municipality offices but would now be extended to citizens to support the city's global digital hub programme. Tshwane's PTN service connects about 250 municipality offices, while its global digital hub programme has 14 000 corporate and about 2 million individual and small to medium business clients.

The programme has clients? Already? And here I was thinking that the fibre is just lying dark in Tshwane. Oh wait. I'm right. They don't have 14000 corporate and 2 million SMME clients. It's all bulsh1t.

 

[Dastrix]

Through the network, Tshwane had saved about 80 percent in telephone costs, which was estimated at between R30 million to R50 million a year, Kunn said.

That bit I can beleive!

 

[dominic]

same project at an advanced stage in cape town, joburg and durban with many more to follow...same thin is happening at government department level - deaprtment of health linking up offices and then looking at utilisation of excess capacity

will be accelerated by the new electronic communications bill