Communications Minister Dina Pule plans to meet with the chairpersons, CEOs and COOs of State-owned companies (SOCs) that report to her, at least once a month, to update her on the progress made in policy commitments announced by her during her Budget Vote speech last month, the Department of Communications (DoC) reported on Thursday.

"I decided to streamline how I relate to the SOCs to ensure that, as a department, we improve the quality of service we deliver to our citizens. On the evidence from my revised engagements with the SOCs, I'm confident we shall meet all the goals we have set ourselves," she said in a statement.

The DoC noted that the Minister had previously held separate quarterly bilateral meetings with each of the SOCs.

Pule said the monthly meetings would also serve as a platform to find speedy resolutions to challenges faced by the SOCs.

Meanwhile, the Minister had held two multilateral meetings with the leadership teams of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Sentech, the South African Post Office, the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA) and the eSkills Institute in the past week.

The discussions centred on the cost to communicate and digital terrestrial television (DTT), besides others.

Icasa was undertaking a broadband market study to determine areas of intervention to lower the cost of communication in South Africa and would on Friday hold a briefing session with stakeholders to launch its Cost to Communicate Programme, which seeks to review related regulations that impact on the cost of communications.

Further, Sentech, the SABC, the post office and the USAASA were urged to improve their public awareness campaigns regarding the roll-out of DTT.

Sentech has developed a Web-based Coverage Information System as an additional tool in the DTT public awareness campaign. It has mapped the location of all post offices into the system and is now incorporating the contact details of the other stakeholders involved in the roll-out of DTT into the system.

The system will enable South Africans to use their location data or address information to find current and final DTT coverage and DTT service providers, such as post offices, installers and retail shops.

South Africans will also be able to find additional technical information such as the type of aerial required to receive the DTT signal in the area where they live.