Citywide Joburg Broadband Network moving ahead
The City of Joburg Municipal Broadband Network project was officially launched earlier this year with a Request for Information in late February. Since then the initial 25 applicants’ submissions have been assessed as part of the process to find a suitable private partner who will assist the city in building and operating the proposed broadband network.
This broadband project aims to ‘address the telecommunication needs of the City of Johannesburg, to provide affordable community access and to ensure that the tremendous socio-economic opportunities associated with broadband connectivity are realized’.
The project has now reached the network demonstration phase in which eleven candidates have been selected to demonstrate the technical features of their solutions.
The eleven successful applicants are Altech, Dimension Data, Ericcson, Goal Technology Solutions, MTN, MWEB / Tellumat, Neology, Telkom, Transtel, Sentech and Vodacom.
From here the demonstration networks will be evaluated after which successful companies will be asked to respond with a Request for Proposal (RFP) and then the selection of a private partner/s by the City of Joburg will take place.
The final Request for Proposal is planned for early 2008.
More details about the Johannesburg Broadband Network Project are available on the Joburg Website: http://www.joburg.org.za/help/broadband_tenders.stm