While customers in Tshwane are browsing and downloading to their hearts’ content, residents within the eThekwini municipality can expect a service that will offer broadband access and domestic voice calls for as little as R150 a month.
The race to deliver cheaper broadband and telephony services to residents via municipal networks is alive and kicking, with most of South Africa’s metros planning to bring services to market in 2007 or early 2008.
Tshwane may be leading the pack with services already on offer in Hatfield, but the other metros are hot on its heels with Cape Town intending to award the tender to build its network this week and eThekwini and Johannesburg issuing requests for proposals early in the new year.
eThekwini metro’s head of geographic information and policy, Jacqui Subban, is heading up its digital city project and says the network is rolled out and services could be delivered the day after the contract is signed.
Subban says the metro is looking for a telecoms partner to set up a telco that will wholesale bandwidth on the municipality’s network to a variety of internet service providers.
“Our key objective is to make sure that Durban’s citizens in three to four years can get internet access and make domestic calls for about R150 a month,” says Subban. “That is our benchmark.”
Subban says the eThekwini network consists of a fibre roll-out as well as a wireless network consisting of about 100 high sites. “Technically we are up and running,” she says.
Subban says the metro is currently running a commercial pilot that had been very successful.