Telkom broadband roll-out lead defended

File photo: Leon Nicholas

File photo: Leon Nicholas

Published May 21, 2015

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Parliament - Telecommunications Minister Siyabonga Cwele on Thursday defended the decision to make Telkom the designated lead agency for broadband roll-out on the basis of its share of fibre-optic cable.

Telkom owns 86 percent of the existing fibre-optic cable, which translates into 147 000 kilometres, and Broadband Infraco the rest, Cwele told a media briefing ahead of his annual budget vote speech in Parliament.

“When the department was working on the business case for the roll-out, working with National Treasury and mandated CSIR (the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research) and one of the accounting firms, to do the mapping — who owns what and where is it? It became quite clear that we have about 170 000 kilometres of cable, that is what people have declared openly up to now but we believe it is more, 86 percent of that fibre belongs to Telkom, that is the reality,” he said.

Cwele said it the state did not see the need for other players to double up in terms of infrastructure.

“We don’t want to over-duplicate infrastructure, we want these networks, including that one of Telkom, ulitmately to be an open-access network.

“So that is what informed, partly, the decision to designate and say this is the lead agency. There is the infrastructure there but we are not sure how much they are going to charge us and all those things. It is an agency in which we have got interest as the state but it is also partly owned by the private sector, but it is an agency also which has got the largest capacity and this skills in the roll-out. Most of the engineers who are rolling out are with Telkom.”

Cwele said the business case for rolling out broadband infrastructure to connect all public institutions in the country would be completed in July.

ANA

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