Africa-Press – Botswana. The Takatokwane-Morwamosu Fibre Reticulation project forms part of government’s commitment to spread communications and technology networks across the country, Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, Mr Thulagano Segokgo has said.
Speaking at the official launch of the project in Motokwe on Friday, Mr Segokgo said ICT vision and aspirations as a country were anchored on the Maitlamo National ICT Policy, which was operationalized through the National Broadband Strategy.
The minister said the strategy was envisioned to improve the broadband Internet penetration throughout the country with connectivity at clinics, schools, tribal offices and businesses.
Mr Segokgo said government through the Reset Agenda treated the use of technology as a way of growing the economy and using technology to speed service delivery.
He said availability of internet in villages and government premises including schools would help residents, teachers and learners to acquire services quickly.
He said the project would be implemented in collaboration with Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet) and the Department of Digital Communications, Infrastructure and Business (DCIB). The project, he said, entailed the supply, installation and commissioning of an overhead optical fibre network, together with the required sub-projects to provide broadband services between Takatokwane and Morwamosu.
Mr Segokgo said the proposed network was an extension of the backbone fibre infrastructure network and its associated service provisioning networks and would cover Takatokwane, Dutlwe, Tshwaane, Khekhenye, Motokwe and Morwamosu.
Minister Segokgo said the project would cover 160km on top of the 11 200km already connected to fibre network. He said project was meant to improve information communication technology in the area.
When giving the project overview, Commercial Executive Officer of BoFiNet, Mr Keabetswe Segole said the national broadband strategy, which sought to improve penetration across the country had an objective to give 90 per cent of the population access to high speed broadband connectivity.
“Therefore, these kinds of projects aim to bring about network infrastructure to underserved areas, using optical fibre and a high-capacity metro network with a speed of 100Gbps. This will bring about open access services to all, from public telecommunications operators,Internet services provides and government entities in the area,” he said
Mr Segole said in addition to the Takatokwane-Morwamosu project, they would be undertaking a national backbone project from Oodi to Machaneng covering additional 13 villages.
He said the expected benefits of this project upon completion were high-speed connections to the schools, dikgotla, clinics and the improved mobile network capacities availed to mobile operators. He said one other key benefit to customers outside the proposed route was improved uptime since the route would be integrated into the existing BoFiNet network.
“As BoFiNet, we are proud that we continue to award such contracts to citizen-owned companies. Citizen economic empowerment is a high priority in our day-to-day operations, and we are very proud that there is a wide pool of citizen companies that continue to take an interest in these projects. From the 5 sub-contractors in this project, only 1 is a foreign owned company, giving testimony to our commitment to drive meaningful citizen economic empowerment,” said Mr Segole.
In his welcome remarks Kgosi Batho Tshoso of Motokwe said the advantages of Internet outweighed its disadvantages and therefore cautioned those who used internet for evil purposes to desist from such behavior. When giving vote of thanks, area Member of Parliament, Mr Tshoganyetso Leuwe said just like electricity, Internet was a necessity. He requested residents to work harmoniously with engaged contractors for the project to run smoothly.
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