Opposition parliamentarians say they welcome finance minister Trevor Manuel's earmarking of funding for Infraco and Sentech, but hope it will be the proper amounts that are needed to finance the country's digital signal migration.
Dene Smuts, communications spokesperson for the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), says she welcomes that Manuel has allocated R3 billion for the contingencies that include national signal distributor Sentech and the creation of broadband infrastructure provider Infraco, referred to as Broadband Infraco in the budget speech.
However, Smuts also hopes that some R900 million is at least awarded to Sentech to upgrade the country's TV signal network.
She says Sentech has been "begging" for funds to begin upgrading the TV network so it can distribute digital signals since 2003 and last year it was only allocated R200 million over three years.
"I hope that Sentech will get the full funding it needs in order for it to meet the 2010 (Soccer World Cup) deadline," Smuts says.
Inkhata Freedom party MP, Suzanne Vos says she welcomes the fact that funding is being earmarked for Sentech.
"However, I worry that it could be too little, too late. Upgrading the TV network is an enormous and complex task and work should have started on it long ago," she says.
Smuts also says it makes sense for Manuel to insist that the departments of communications and public enterprises sort themselves out so there is not duplication of effort.
"One must be able to follow the logic of what is happening. Infraco will be a major factor going forward and Snetech is still a player, especially if it gets funding for its wireless broadband plans," she says.
As far as the possibility of Infraco laying an undersea cable that could rival the SAT-3, controlled locally by Telkom, Smuts says this implies that there are substantial problems with the proposed East African Cable (Eassy).
"It shows that Eassy is just not easy," she quipped.
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