13 Nov 2013

Botswana has a relatively good telecommunications network based on fibre and microwave technology, Parliament has been told.

Responding to a question, Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Nonofo Molefhi said the country’s core network which was composed of fibre optic and microwave backhaul links extends to all cities, towns and major villages.

Minister Molefhi told the house that the capacity that Botswana had was more than enough for domestic needs as a country. In addition, the minister said there were high-speed metro rings in major business centres of Gaborone and Francistown and spur links to the border areas. “These allow transmission of voice, data and internet”, he said.

He said bandwidth gaps had been identified in certain areas at local access level or municipal level and would be addressed through the Broadband Strategy that his ministry had developed. The minister explained that Botswana compared favourably with other countries within the region in terms of infrastructure development.

However, he stated that penetration level was still low in terms of internet usage, due to a number of factors, which included affordability, ICT illiteracy and lack of local content.

“From the 2013 global information technology report which looks at drivers of ICT readiness, network access, usage, social and economic impacts, in general our ratings are comparatively low due to amongst others high tariffs and sector inefficiencies as compared to performance in the global picture,” he said.

He said government is committed to addressing bottlenecks in the sector through policy intervention, converged regulation and creating an enabling environment for telecommunications/ ICT sector. The MP for Okavango Mr Bagalatia Arone had wanted to know how Botswana rated with regard to levels of local and international telecommunication capacity in view of the high expectations of investors. ENDS