The City of Cape Town is looking to expand its Smart Cape Access Network and wants vendors to supply more bandwidth at a lower cost, says project manager Douglas Gelderbloem.
For the past two years, the Smart Cape Access Network has turned the city`s libraries into free public Internet access points. Anyone who has a library card, issued for free, can make use of the facilities that includes, during a session, 45 minutes of surfing the Internet, an e-mail account, and typing and printing facilities.
About 50 000 people have been registered to make use of the facilities since the project`s inception 24 months ago. Users range from school children doing homework to people looking for jobs and small business people.
"However, there is a problem with the bandwidth costs. The city makes nothing out of this and Telkom is charging us about R1 500 per library per month for 64Kb connections. With 100 libraries, that is amounting to R150 000 per month, or R1.8 million a year," Gelderbloem says.
Expanded access
He says the City of Cape Town wants to expand the Smart Cape Access Network to include other public access facilities such as community halls and clinics. It will also enable people to obtain information about the city, such as rates and taxes and other services.
"But most of all we want more bandwidth at less cost," Gelderbloem says.
A request for information (RFI) has been released on the City of Cape Town Web site. The closing date is 12 May.
"We have some ideas of our own, but we want to see what potential bidders for such a tender could offer us," Gelderbloem says.
He says it is envisaged the future Smart Cape Access Network would also offer voice over Internet Protocol facilities that could include free calls to municipal services, or even within the city`s area.
Outsourced management
According to Gelderbloem, the new Smart Cape Access Network must be able to peer with the city`s established corporate network that consists of about 10 000 PCs and over which the metro`s financial systems run.
"What we are considering is that the future bidders for the Smart Cape Access Network would actually run our non-corporate network," he says.
During the past year, Tshwane and Ethikweni municipalities have issued similar RFIs for networks. However, Gelderbloem says the City of Cape Town wants to outsource the management of the Smart Cape Access Network and so it is quite different from what the other two municipalities are proposing.
Share