{"id":196692,"date":"2017-09-05T13:16:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T11:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=196692"},"modified":"2017-09-05T13:16:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T11:16:03","slug":"government-looking-to-merge-state-telcos-into-single-broadband-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/broadband\/196692\/government-looking-to-merge-state-telcos-into-single-broadband-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Government looking to merge state telcos into single broadband company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A plan to merge two of South Africa\u2019s state-owned telecom firms into a single broadband network company will be reviewed by the cabinet in December, a senior government official told lawmakers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>According to a report by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/commoditiesNews\/idAFL8N1LM21D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a><\/strong>, the government hopes to combine the fibre network and high-speed bandwidth capacity of Broadband Infraco with Sentech\u2019s satellite capability, boosting connections to remote areas as it aims to lift mobile broadband coverage to 80% of the population by 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t want a top-heavy company, but a company that has sharp capacity to aggregate what exists in South Africa so we don\u2019t duplicate,\u201d said Robert Nkuna, director-general at the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services.<\/p>\n<p>Nkuna told a parliamentary committee the law would need to be amended to allow for the establishment of a National Broadband Network (NBN) by around 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The firm will be able to strike access agreements with state-owned firms, such as power utility Eskom, and eventually private sector firms, said Nkuna.<\/p>\n<p>However this would not lead to a monopoly, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Nkuna also indicated that the\u00a0department was not in favour of selling off Sentech, which carries more than 90% of South Africa\u2019s radio and television signal, to the private sector to help fund the new company.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/broadband\/196106\/sa-regulator-announces-plans-to-release-lte-spectrum-to-mobile-operators\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SA regulator announces plans to release LTE spectrum to mobile operators<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A plan to merge two of South Africa\u2019s state-owned telecom firms into a single broadband network company will be reviewed by the cabinet in December, a senior government official told lawmakers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":194120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5553],"tags":[26,3482],"class_list":["post-196692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","tag-headline","tag-reuters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196698,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196692\/revisions\/196698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}