Municipal broadband : the 'next generation'and the 'last mile'
Date
2007
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Southern African Journal of Information and Communication (SAJIC), The Edge Institute / Research ICT Africa, Braamfontein, ZA
Abstract
The article raises two related questions, the strategy question of whether South Africa should focus on universal access
to the Internet in the next 10 years for all cities and towns and the operational question of how South Africa can migrate to a highspeed,
high-bandwidth environment for all citizens and SMEs in the next 10 years. The diffusion of Internet access to South Africa’s
cities and towns has been slow and the diffusion of broadband even slower. A number of municipalities, mainly the large
metropolitan areas, and a few smaller towns, have been developing models for ‘municipal broadband’ provisioning. The article
responds to these two questions by reporting the findings of a series of interviews on municipal broadband in South Africa,
comparing lessons from the US and ending with a set of four perspectives on future choices and approaches for municipalities. It
argues that the metropolitan Governments surveyed have already embarked along the road of ubiquitous citizen access to the
Internet through selecting ‘digital cities’ approaches. The challenge is to identify workable operational and financing models for
municipal broadband across varying types of municipalities – metropolitan, smaller cities and towns. This is being digested in the
learning experiments currently underway.
Description
item.page.type
Journal Article (peer-reviewed)
item.page.format
Text
Keywords
INTERNET ACCESS, BROADBAND, LAST MILE, DIGITAL DIVIDE, DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP, SOUTH AFRICA