Broadband penetration is critical

[Dave A]

Here is quite a critical look at how South Africa is lagging behind in the internet revolution and how ineffective we've been in moving forward.

If the United States needs a chief technology officer (CTO) to drive broadband penetration, why don't we?

Earlier this year South Africa broke the one-million broadband consumers mark, which gives us a broadband penetration rate of about 2%.

Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Korea, Norway and Iceland are leading the way with more than 29%. The US is just behind with 23%, which goes to show how far behind South Africa really is.

As the US national elections are heating up, Democrat candidate Barrack Obama has made the appointment of a cabinet-level CTO one of his key policies.

Obama is convinced that the US is not doing enough to create jobs through technology and sees greater broadband penetration as an enormous economic driver.

Sound familiar? Yes, the information communication technology (ICT) sector was singled out in government's accelerated share growth initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) as a key driver of jobs by lowering the cost of doing business.

But, however honorable the intentions of the Asgisa policy are, the fact of the matter is that on the ground any ICT reform is being driven by Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, whose general reign over the sector has been incompetent, to put it mildly.
full story from M&G here

I'm not sure the criticism is entirely fair, although some of Ivy's moves are difficult to fathom.