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World Cup cities promise affordable Web access by 2010
The World Cup host cities of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town claim
to be well on the way to meeting their stated target of making affordable
Web access available in time for the football spectacular, having already
started to roll out public Web and email services.
Accounting for ICT progress at eThekwini, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and
Ekurhuleni regions, a four-panel team told the Connect IT: Joburg 2010
two-day conference, held in Sandton, that the metropolitan areas were
looking to make the Internet accessible to all citizens at a reasonable
rate of around R150 a month by 2010.
Addressing the conference last month, eThe-kwini metropolitan municipality
head of geographic information and policy Jacquie Subban said that the
eThekwini metro, which hosts Durban, was building an ICT network that
was independent of the electricity, water and CCTV network and that the
objective was to make telecommunications of voice and data readily available.
She reiterated that bringing telecommunications to households at R150
a month was an achievable target.
The challenge, however, was to harness the private sector to assist in
reaching its benchmark.
We want to benefit dedicated portals, such as schools and healthcare,
she said, adding that the metro had for the past few years been installing
fibre-optic lines at a value of some R6-million a year.
Subban also reported that the eThekwini metro had, since last year, started
installing an active layer of fibre-optic cable.
'We are expecting broadband and the likes of hotspots to be the norm in
the city by 2010,' she said.
Ekurhuleni executive director for ICT Nilesh Singh said that while Ekurhuleni
was not a host city, it was, nevertheless, working to assist its sister
city Johannesburg in rolling out ICT.
'We have the largest IP telephony in the country,' he said, adding that
in the last month the metro had installed1 500 km of fibre-optic cables.
Mining
Weekly, 08 December 2006
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