Rather than concerns over insufficient bandwidth supply to South Africa, a major bottleneck slowing Internet growth in the country was said to be the lack of access, or ways to connect to the bandwidth available.

"Connectivity and getting people connected to the bandwidth is the issue. This is the real challenge, not just whether or not there is enough bandwidth, but whether or not we connect to it," explained Neotel chief technical officer Angus Hay.

Because of the growing need to increase access, converged services operator Neotel was "rapidly" rolling out wireless 3G and CDMA networks. "We have managed to cover about six-million people so far," said Hay, during a panel discussion at the Southern African telecommunications networks and application conference (Satnac) in Swaziland on Monday.

He noted that in South Africa, the significant challenge was rolling out infrastructure into rural areas. It was said to cost ten times as much to connect people living in rural areas, as it did to connect the same number of people living in urban areas.

This also raised fears that convergence could actually increase the gap known as the digital divide, because of slower connection speeds in rural areas.

Telkom CEO Reuben September said that a discussion regarding connecting rural and underserviced areas needed to take place with urgency, as it required a shift in thinking from traditional business models. But he felt that some of the costs associated with rural areas could be addressed, particularly if a new value chain was established.

The theme for this year's Satnac conference is ‘Convergence - enabling a 21st century lifestyle', and Hay emphasised that the technology for convergence was largely in place, however connectivity needed to be addressed.

September added that the upgrade of Telkom's access networks and core networks was a challenge, but the operator was investing millions in infrastructure.

Indeed, South Africa was starting to see more collaboration among industry competitors in terms of infrastructure provision. Hay noted that a very competitive environment existed in the retail space, and thus companies sought to minimise the cost of deployment of services. If the basic cost of infrastructure could be reduced, and an enabling environment existed, operating costs could be reduced.

A large portion of the cost of rolling out infrastructure was in the civil engineering requirement, and thus it was possible for telecoms operators to collaborate on projects, and divide these costs.

An example was the ‘tri-build' terrestrial fibre optics network stretching from Johannesburg to Cape Town, in which Neotel, MTN and Vodacom were involved.

Significant investments were also being made in sub-marine fibre-optic cables, increasing international connectivity to South Africa.

Both Telkom and Neotel were involved with the East African submarine system, as well as the West African cable system, which was largely being driven by key players in the South African industry.

Neotel also has an agreement with the Seacom undersea cable along the East Coast of Africa.

With all the scheduled undersea cables landing in South Africa over the next five year, bandwidth capacity was set to increase by a factor of ten, thus ensuring the international connectivity. Access to this bandwidth was the issue that needed to be addressed by operators, and as suggested by a number of delegates at Satnac, the government had a responsibility to incentivise or stimulate infrastructure rollout into rural and underserviced areas.

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