The department of telecommunications & postal services has established a “war room” to fast-track the roll-out of broadband in the country.
“Government has identified information and communications technology and broadband roll-out as one of the enablers for faster and more equitable economic growth as evidenced by its inclusion in the nine-point plan,” telecoms minister Siyabonga Cwele said on Monday.
He was speaking at Telkom’s Satnac conference in George in the Western Cape.
The broadband war room brings together all the departments that are responsible for broadband.
“It is a product of the government’s coordinated implementation plan through the cluster system.
“We are also practicing this coordination at the implementation level through provincial broadband steering committees that seek to align all broadband activities to the South Africa Connect and remove bottlenecks that impede an accelerated roll-out,” he said.
Cwele said the department’s efforts to re-imagine the future include modernising policies that govern the ICT sector.
After following a process of consultations throughout the country with all stakeholders, the department has a draft national integrated ICT policy white paper, which is before cabinet for consideration and finalisation.
“It seeks to create an environment that, among others, enables universal access to modern communications tools and services, opens up opportunities for new and smaller businesses and facilitates more competition in the sector in a manner that ultimately reduces the costs.
“We want these policies to create an enabling environment for small businesses to use technology to unlock their job creation potential and also address localise the Internet by using the Internet to come up with local solutions to solve our problems,” he said. — SAnews
