Hon Chairperson, hon Minister, members and the public, I've promised that I would deliver this speech in English. IT has always been my passion. So today I just want to convince you why this Broadband Infraco Bill is important by outlining the problems and challenges in our telecommunications industry.
The monopoly of infrastructure by Telkom has been there for years. It's an example of privatisation gone wrong. Privatisation has made Telkom very efficient at exploiting our public in terms of its pricing and services. This has been confirmed by many studies and reports.
For example, while we are getting excited about getting more ADSL, in Japan and China one already gets fibre optic cables directly to one's home. While we worry about our monthly data capturing in South Africa, for many years, we have been joined by foreigners enjoying unlimited data transfer. These are exactly some of the reasons why state intervention through Infraco is important; it's exactly to correct this market failure.
Infraco also provides for capital investment at the expense of the public good, while improving and modernising our infrastructure. Now Infraco can act as a competition enabler to level the playing field to provide competitive broadband access both on cost and capacity. It will be a growth enabler for our economy and will particularly assist in youth development. South African youths are both fortunate and unfortunate. They are fortunate in being able to join the global market with advanced technology. At the same time, they are unfortunate not to have the cheap resources available as well as access to information and knowledge, despite the available technology.
Now, Infraco will enable a true information highway for our youth as knowledge workers. Imagine Thapelo, from a rural town in Mpumalanga, accessing our national archive through broadband, or delivering design projects for contract work in Beijing via high-resolution video streaming.
This knowledge empowerment is what we have yet to realise. Currently, Thapelo is limited to the local library with its limited resources and limited archives. Should he attempt to make telephonic contact with his clients in Beijing, they probably would not be able to understand him because Thapelo would try to minimise the cost of the international call by speaking 10 times faster than usual.
So, hon members, we ask you to support this Bill and mark our first step towards a healthier telecommunications industry in South African.
Lastly, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank our former chairperson, the hon Yunus Carrim, for the leadership and guidance he provided during the processing of this particular Bill. Thank you.