SOUTH Africa needs a clear telecoms policy soon to prevent the poor being left further behind in the Internet revolution and set the tone for Web growth in the rest of Africa, say analysts.
“South Africa has some highly developed sectors and some really undeveloped sectors, so it represents an opportunity for experiments for the whole of Africa,” said Vernon Ellis, the international chairman of management consultancy Accenture.
“People can’t eat computers, but ICT (information and communication technologies) must be seen as an enabler,” he told a news briefing ahead of a two-day meeting in Cape Town of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries’ Internet taskforce.
The so-called digital opportunity taskforce (Dotforce) aims to tackle the gap between technology haves and have-nots and to build the infrastructure for Internet use in poor countries.
Almost seven years after the end of apartheid, only around 14% of South Africans have access to a telephone, and rural people and the poor are increasingly being left behind. Only two million of the country’s 43 million people use the Internet.
For the continent as a whole, just over two percent of Africans have telephone access.
Myron Zlotnick, head of regulatory affairs at Internet service provider M-Web, said although there had been some recent improvement, “We would like to see a harder drive towards policy coordination in South Africa.”
Zlotnick said uncertainty about the structure of the market, the high cost of telecoms services, as well as computer literacy problems were among obstacles to bridging the digital divide.
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has promised to issue telecoms policy directives in March, which will include details on how many operators the government will licence to compete with fixed-line operator Telkom.
Telkom’s monopoly is blamed for keeping bandwidth prices high and Internet penetration capped.
But in an effort to ensure rural people take up the Net, the government announced plans at the news briefing to roll out hundreds of Internet terminals in rural areas from March.
The project, led by the South African Post Office, aims to set up an initial 100 Public Information Terminals by end-May to give people outside cities a chance to surf the Web, send email, shop online, access education and contact the authorities.
“Government is considering giving access at a very, very low cost or no cost at all,” Post Office eBusiness senior manager NewYear Ntuli said, but added “we don’t want to be seen to be competing with ISPs”.
But Ellis warned against providing free services. “I’d caution against large government spending in this area as it won’t be self sustaining. It will die on the vine.” – Reuters
CUSTOM SHARE SERVICE
CUSTOMISE your share portfolio and have live prices delivered by e-mail or cellphone. Various options available.
More details