Hon Chairperson, hon Ministers, Deputy Ministers, hon members and distinguished guests, President Zuma concluded his state of the nation address in February this year with these words:
As South Africans, we should continue to have one primary goal - to make our country a truly great and prosperous nation.
The ANC believes that state-owned companies have a significant contribution to make towards achieving this goal. In the aftermath of the 2008-09 economic crisis, we saw an increased role for the state in the economy in major parts of the world. In South Africa, where private-sector activities have continued to be subdued, state-owned companies have assumed major strategic importance regarding investment, job creation and economic growth.
Broadband Infraco, which is what I am going to be speaking about today, is one of the state-owned companies with an important role to play in the roll- out of the information communications technology needed to grow the economy. Again, I quote from the President's speech:
To prepare for the advanced economy we need to develop, we will expand the broadband network. Last year the private and public sector laid about 7 000 km of new fibre-optic cables. The plan is to achieve 100% broadband internet penetration by 2020.
The rationale for the establishment of Broadband Infraco by the government of South Africa was to create an environment in the ICT sector in which business and ordinary citizens are able to access large streams of high bandwidth capacity at affordable rates and with ease of access to places where they live and work. This intervention has had a significant impact on the pricing strategies of different operators, resulting in the reduction of business-to-business prices by up to 70% between certain cities. This helped boost the growth of ICT-driven industries such as business process services - our call centres.
Broadband Infraco acts as a basic platform to stimulate private and public sector development and innovation. Up to R1,8 billion has been invested and has resulted in the construction of almost 13 000 km of fibre and access to 151 open points of presence. A point of presence is a node from where government and other private operators can plug their networks into Broadband Infraco's network for onward usage. This means there is more capacity available for the South African public to use.
Broadband Infraco has served as the backbone of the second network operator. It carries high capacity for all three major network mobile operators: Cell C, MTN and Vodacom. It further provides connectivity to operators that carry traffic to neighbouring countries, like Liquid Telecommunications Operations SA and Seacom.
Broadband Infraco assumed a major investor status in the West African Cable System, WACS, which is a 14 500 km-long submarine fibre-optic cable linking Southern Africa, West Africa and Europe. The benefits to South Africa and Africa at large will be: lowering the cost of international bandwidth to a level comparable with international benchmarks; creating a sustainable and efficient international bandwidth market in South Africa; positioning South Africa for future growth by connecting her to key global knowledge economies, ie Europe, North America, South America and India; and providing cost-effective access to international bandwidth for key projects such as the Square Kilometre Array, SKA, telescope.
The SKA telescope will be the world's biggest telescope and one of the biggest scientific projects ever. [Applause.] It will use enough optical fibre to wrap around the earth twice. The data collected by it in a 24-hour period would take nearly 2 million years to play back on an iPod. It will generate enough raw data every day to fill 15 million 64 gigabyte iPods. The central computer will have the processing power of about 100 million PCs. The mind boggles! Crisis? Hey, we've got some fantastic people working out there in this country! [Applause.]
The most important spin-off will be the generation of knowledge and knowledge workers - young scientists and engineers with cutting-edge skills and expertise in a wide range of scarce and innovative fields. South Africa has areas that are not deemed financially viable for ICT infrastructure roll-out. Through Broadband Infraco, government has committed itself to ensuring backbone coverage in underserviced rural areas in terms of its licence obligations - these cover 57 points of presence.
As I said earlier, the plan is to provide a 100% broadband coverage to all households by 2020, establishing more points of presence in district municipalities, extending new fibre networks across provinces and at local level, and taking the network into deep rural areas, with affordable access. While the private sector will invest in ICT infrastructure for urban and corporate networks, government will co-invest in township and rural access as well as e-government, school and health connectivity. One part of digital access to all South Africans is TV migration nationally from analogue to digital broadcasting.
According to section 4(1) of the Broadband Infraco Act, Act 33 of 2007:
The main objectives of Infraco are to expand the availability and affordability of access to electronic communications, including but not limited to underdeveloped and underserviced areas ... through the provision of: (a) electronic communications network services, and (b) electronic communications services.
The Act stipulates that Broadband Infraco will be able to fulfil its objectives once it obtains the two licences. To date only the ECNS licence has been granted.
Chairperson, may I address the Minister through you? Hon Minister, Broadband Infraco is making a significant contribution to economic development. As Parliament, we are concerned that the ECS licence has not been granted. This is having a negative effect on delivery of ICT to the rural areas, and this really concerns the ANC. We urge both you and the Minister of Communications to resolve this impasse urgently.
In his 2012 report, the acting CEO, Dr Andrew Shaw, stated the following:
The organisational structure was adjusted in October 2011. This was necessary to meet newly defined market needs, improve accountability, enhance capital project roll-out and address a number of governance- related shortcomings in the previous structure.
He further said:
By the end of calendar year 2011, the presence of the newly appointed executive management was felt in earnest.
We note the improved financial performance of Infraco, recording a net loss of R95,2 million for 2011-12 as opposed to a loss of R207 million in the previous year. This is a huge improvement. Vacancies have been filled with suitably qualified persons. The ANC welcomes the new chief executive officer, Ms Puleng Sejanamane, and Ms Ramasela Magoele as the chief financial officer. [Applause.]
We want to thank the director-general and his department for the significant role they have played in steering this ship through stormy waters. The ANC believes that Broadband Infraco is ready to play a significant role in contributing towards growing the economy and making our country a truly great and prosperous nation, as expressed by our President in his state of the nation address. [Applause.]