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.<\/p>\n
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’.<\/p>\n
The project has now reached the network demonstration phase in which eleven candidates have been selected to demonstrate the technical features of their solutions.<\/p>\n
The eleven successful applicants are Altech, Dimension Data, Ericcson, Goal Technology Solutions, MTN, MWEB \/ Tellumat, Neology, Telkom, Transtel, Sentech and Vodacom.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The final Request for Proposal is planned for early 2008.<\/p>\n
More details about the Johannesburg Broadband Network Project are available on the Joburg Website: http:\/\/www.joburg.org.za\/help\/broadband_tenders.stm<\/a><\/p>\n