The City of Johannesburg's broadband network project has attracted overwhelming interest from industry players looking to grab the potentially lucrative contract.
The contract will be to provide wireless coverage (in partnership with the local government) over Johannesburg's 1 644 square kilometre jurisdiction.
At a compulsory industry briefing, held yesterday in Riviera, Johannesburg, about 180 private sector company representatives listened to the plans outlined by the city's steering committee on the project.
It is expected that the proposals, demonstrations and tendering processes will evoke heated competition in the industry.
Many more people attended the briefing session than was expected, said the city's Douglas Cohen - project consultant for the ICT sector support at the city's Department of Economic Development.
Tech ambivalence
Jabu Zimu, programme manager at the city's office of the CIO, said at the briefing that the proposed service will give all of Johannesburg's 3.2 million residents access to the Web, VOIP telephony, television and radio over IP, video-on-demand, e-government services, free Internet zones and virtual private networks.
Aside from these benefits, Zimu says the network will cater for the city's surveillance needs, assist with traffic management and commercial display systems, and help local government mobile workers.
He is not prescriptive about what technology is to be used by the successful bidder. "It could be WiFi, WiMax, fibre or powerline broadband - as long as it is true broadband."
This is important, says industry commentator and council member of the Free Market Foundation Neil Emerick, who adds that: "Vendors should be able to bring the technology they wish.
"It would be good to see a series of experiments running in the city - it is the duty of government to experiment with different [broadband] technologies."
Demo networks
Submissions close at the end of this month. After an initial evaluation process, the shortlisted respondents will be allocated one square kilometre in the city to deploy a test network.
This will be the final "acid test" of the bidding firms' ability to provide what the city is looking for.
Cohen says these demo networks will encompass an area where there is a school and some businesses, for instance.
There are no firm dates on when the demo networks will be built and evaluated, but Cohen stated yesterday that, during the month of April, the city will be considering the initial submissions and drawing up the shortlist.
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