{"id":31783,"date":"2013-02-14T19:54:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T17:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=31783"},"modified":"2013-02-15T08:18:25","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T06:18:25","slug":"ict-largely-ignored-in-sona-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/31783\/ict-largely-ignored-in-sona-address\/","title":{"rendered":"ICT largely ignored in Zuma address"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Jacob Zuma<\/a> only glanced over the telecommunications services and broadband sector in delivering his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday (14 February 2013).<\/p>\n

“Last year, the private and public sector laid about 7000 new fibre optic cables. The plan is to achieve 100% broadband internet penetration by 2020,”\u00a0he said fleetingly.<\/p>\n

In 2012 Zuma also largely ignored the telecommunications sector, but did hint at investments in \u2018information and communication technologies\u2019 in five \u201cmajor geographically-focussed programmes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jobs<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Thursday, however, the president did highlight the need to create jobs.<\/p>\n

“Our GDP growth is expected to average at 2.5% cent, down from 3.1% in the previous year. We need growth rates in excess of five per cent to create more jobs.<\/p>\n

“The National Development Plan outlines interventions that can put the economy on a better footing. The target for job creation is set at 11 million by 2030 and the economy needs to grow threefold to create the desired jobs,” he said.<\/p>\n

Electronic harassment<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Zuma also noted that additional mechanisms to protect women from harassment through \u201celectronic communications\u201d are in the works, in the form of the Protection from Harassment Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the Domestic Violence Act also provides protection, it only applies to persons who are in a domestic relationship,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

“The Protection from Harassment Bill also deals with harassment by persons who stalk their victims by means of electronic communications,” he said.<\/p>\n

Missed broadband and telecoms promises<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his first State of the Nation Address (2009) Zuma said that Government \u201cwill ensure that the cost of telecommunications is reduced through the projects underway to expand broadband capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2010 Zuma focused on broadband, highlighting that government was working to reduce the cost to communicate, adding that cheaper and faster broadband services are also on the cards.<\/p>\n

To date not much has happened to deliver on the broadband promises.\u00a0 In October 2012 the National Treasury<\/a> further indicated that the communications department made no progress on meeting its broadband penetration targets.<\/p>\n

According to the treasury\u2019s report the DoC<\/a> achieved 0% (zero percent) of its 7% target for the \u201cpercentage of broadband penetration per year\u201d.<\/p>\n

New communications minister Dina Pule<\/a> is however still punting a 100% broadband penetration rate by 2020 in South Africa although concrete plans as to how this will be achieved remain sketchy.<\/p>\n

More on South Africa\u2019s ICT sector<\/h3>\n

1GB per user per day for SA by 2020?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mobile spectrum would create 1.5m jobs in SA: GSMA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA needs R200bn ICT infrastructure investment: MTN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mobility impact on SAs GDP<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Jacob Zuma only glanced over the ICT sector in delivering his fifth State of the Nation Address on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":5835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[58,26,83,1455,5178],"class_list":["post-31783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-broadband-1","tag-headline","tag-jacob-zuma","tag-sona","tag-state-of-the-nation-addres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31783","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=31783"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31789,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31783\/revisions\/31789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}