Tata-led South African telecom operator Neotel has secured a ground-breaking deal with the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and the Western Cape provincial government to provide broadband services across the province over the next three years.
The project is a first-of-its-kind in South Africa and has strict guidelines to deliver sites and service levels in a true public-private partnership, by leveraging the skills, resources and expertise of each party for the provision of broadband services across the Province, the company said.
"The Western Cape government is focused on realising its vision for the province and Neotel is extremely pleased to play the role of a partner to make the vision a reality," the Managing Director and CEO of Neotel, Sunil Joshi, said."Neotel is delighted and humbled to be chosen to deploy fibre optic infrastructure across the Province for the provision of broadband and voice services to Government departments and also make available these services to communities, businesses and households to create a connected Province.The initiative is a direct outcome of the Western Cape Provincial Government's vision 2030 to let every citizen benefit from broadband in their daily lives, he said.As part of the project, Neotel will provide connectivity to over 2,000 sites across the province to a mix of government buildings, schools, healthcare institutions, and libraries."We also expect many large, medium and small businesses, and other government departments to benefit from the infrastructure and connectivity as it is rolled out for their broadband, voice, data centre and VPN requirements," Joshi added.
As part of this strategic project, Neotel has also partnered with the Department of Economic Development and Tourism to provide free Wi-Fi services to local communities at a site in each ward during the project, continuing with its commitment to help with social development and uplift communities in the region.Neotel will also offer its leading edge voice, broadband, VPN and other innovative communication services to local businesses.This will include small or large, government departments and institutions in the Province and households as it expands its wireless and fibre network across the Western Cape Province, thereby developing the communities, and through enterprise development, exposing entrepreneurs to new opportunities for growth and developing sustainable skills, it said.Tata Communications is the majority stakeholder in Neotel, which was established about a decade ago as a competitor to the fixed-line state operator Telkom.
