112 tenders looming

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 18 Feb 2008

The Department of Communications (DOC) will shortly issue requests for proposals (RFP) to construct one or more national "112" Public Emergency Centres (PEC).

The centres will allow South Africans to dial "112" toll-free on any telecommunications device to access a range of emergency services.

A request for qualification (RFQ) phase closes on 29 February. Only vendors who responded to the RFQ process will be invited to tender for the design, maintenance and management of these centres, or to provide them with "operational services".

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA), meanwhile, is set to hold public hearings on Wednesday and Thursday on draft regulations on toll-free access to the centres.

Regulations published last year required all telecommunications providers to take steps to allow such access at their expense, even from fixed and mobile handsets that are without SIM cards, are otherwise blocked or without airtime.

The DOC has been tinkering with the concept since 2002 and established a pilot contact centre at the Strand, near Somerset West, in 2004. That centre currently handles ambulance calls for the Cape metropole.

The DOC was mandated by Section 76 of the Electronic Communications Act, on the books since 2005, to set up the centres. The same section authorises ICASA to issue regulations on aspects related to the centres.

Although a 112 single emergency number and contact centre infrastructure is "not per se a FIFA requirement" for next year's Confederations Cup and the 2010 World Cup, the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA) says it "would for sure be a helpful and appreciated initiative by the South African government".

As recently as November, there were still a number of unanswered questions around the project. DOC spokesman Albi Modise said officials still had to decide on two key issues: whether the project should be government-run, as is the situation with the police's 10111 centres, or whether it should be a public-private partnership. This is the case in India, where several state governments have teamed with the private sector to provide an affordable service.

The second issue was whether there should be a single contact centre or multiple sites. Andra Pradesh state, in India, has a single centre - the Emergency Management and Research Institute - for 80 million people, about double the South African population. The state itself is about six times smaller than SA.

Modise this morning could not immediately say if the issues had been resolved or whether the RFQ and RFP processes would be used to help cut the Gordian knot.