Gov�t invests P700m to improve internet access
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday July 27, 2017 18:00
Addressing Parliamentarians this week, the Minister of Transport and Communications, Kitso Mokaila said from the amount the government has spent about P367 million on the backbone projects while on local access, it has investment P334 million.
During the 2014/2015 financial year, about P124 million was invested in backbone projects while on local access about P149 million was invested. During 2015/2016, about P206 million was invested in backbone project while on local access, the investment was P118 million. During the 2016/2017 financial year, about P36 million was invested on backbone projects while P66 million went towards local access.
“The investment was extending the fibre backbone to localities such as Tsabong, Struizendam, Mohembo, Gudingwa and Bobonong which were previously not connected to the high speed backbone infrastructure,” he said.
This initiative also provided broadband local access fibre to over 1,500 business and government premises in Gaborone, Palapye, Francistown, Selebi-Phikwe, Kasane, Maun, Tsabong and Bobonong. According to Mokaila, internet connection speed in Botswana translates to an average of 566 megabits (Mb/s) for each licence operator.
“The average internet connection to the retail users depends on the services that are purchased and provided by the licensed retail operators as well as the level of contention sharing that the licensed retail operators offer on the procured total bandwidth.
“It is important to note that most licensed retail providers do not solely only buy internet per capacity from BoFiNet, they in most cases have two wholesale providers. For the wholesale Wi-Fi product, BoFiNet guarantees a minimum of three megabits and is capable of delivering up to 300 megabits during off peak,” he said.
In addition, Mokaila said BoFiNet provides dedicated wholesale Internet Protocol Transit (IPT) with a price that ranges from P661/MBs to P1155/MBs highlighting that the margins are dependent on the cost and mark-up that the retailer sees fit to sustain the cost of providing service. Mokaila said it is commercially sensitive to provide individual pricing of ISPs.
Mokaila was responding to a question from Specially Elected Member of Parliament, Bogolo Kenewendo.
The MP wanted to know how much the government had invested on the internet backbone infrastructure, the average internet connection speed in the country, the average going rate per megabits BoFiNet limited to internet service providers and the average margin per MB of ISPs.