SECTOR 2

Minister Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams promised that a further 2000 schools
would be connected before the end of 2013.
Out-dated telecommunications and broadcasting policies from the late 1990s are
still being used, but these are no longer relevant in what is increasingly becoming
a broadband world. When the government licensed two cellular service operators
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it never envisaged that people would be
accessing the Internet through their cell phones in future.
“Telkom envisaged that it would always have a monopoly on telecommunications,
but because our economy is freer than others, private sector investment, and not
government policy, has driven the communication needs of people.”
“In the 1990s, South Africa used to be at the top of the connectivity scale in
terms of the average bandwidth. According to the 2013 Ookla Net Index, South
Africa now ranks 119th out of 186 countries and has slower average bandwidth
speeds than many other African countries, including Zimbabwe, Angola, and
Mozambique.”
Concern was also raised that as a result of the poor handling by the state of the
migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television (set to be completed in
June 2015, according to an International Telecommunications Union framework),
this may not happen in any real way in South Africa:
“Instead, there will probably be a move to satellite and video-on-demand over
the internet.”

Scores:
Individual scores:
1

Country does not meet indicator

2

Country meets only a few aspects of indicator

3

Country meets some aspects of indicator

4

Country meets most aspects of indicator

5

Country meets all aspects of the indicator

Average score:

2.1 (2010: 1.6; 2008: n/a; 2006: n/a)

AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER SOUTH AFRICA 2013

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