The two licences issued to Sentech this week, which turned it into a telecommunications operator overnight, will cost the company R50 million, but it will have to spend at least twice that much to establish school Internet laboratories throughout the country.
The state-owned broadcast signal distributor received international gateway and multimedia services licences this week after Telkom's five-year exclusivity came to an end.
In terms of the licences, Sentech will pay a R25 million once-off fee for each, far below the combined R300 million originally envisaged by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA). It will also pay 0.5% of its revenues from each licence annually and make contributions to the Universal Service Fund.
Far outweighing the direct licence costs, however, is the more than R100 million it will have to spend to connect 500 rural schools to the Internet within five years.
The multimedia licence, which caused controversy when the Telecommunications Amendment Act that enabled it was debated, requires Sentech to install a minimum of 8 500 Internet-connected computers in schools in rural areas.
Sentech will be responsible for providing the computers as well as upgrading buildings to house them and supplying furniture for these buildings. The workstations must feature word processing, anti-virus and e-mail software, and the networks, which will range from five to 25 workstations, must each support up to 1 500 user accounts.
The hardware costs of the obligations are conservatively estimated at R100 million. Sentech will also be obliged to train 1 000 teachers to act as network administrators and to provide 2 500 teachers with "professional development opportunities" to enable them to use the new facilities to teach.
Internet access must be provided by Sentech, but will be paid for by the schools at rates agreed on in consultation with the Department of Education and Schoolnet.
If Sentech fails to deliver on these obligations, ICASA could impose penalties that range from fines to revoking its licence.
Sentech representatives were not immediately available for comment.
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