One of the areas in which South Africa is definitely lagging is in the provision of broadband internet access. Encouragingly, however, it seems that government has recognised the problem and is trying to come up with ways to turn it around. The Gauteng government, for example, has just awarded a R1.2bn tender to Altech to install a huge fibre-optic broadband network to connect Gauteng Province government offices, townships, community centres and hospitals to the internet. According to Altech CEO Craig Venter, the project promises to be an exciting one. Altech will be working closely with Chinese technology group Huawei to roll out fibre-optic cable that will give recipients broadband speeds of 1 to 10 gbps. It’s the biggest provincial government broadband project in South Africa, and is a positive sign that government is taking internet access seriously at last. – FD
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ALEC HOGG:  The subsidiary of Altech, Altech Alcom Matomo has been awarded a Gauteng broadband tender worth one-point-two-billion-rand. Chief Executive Craig Venter joins us in the studio. Craig, we were talking off-air about life outside the glare and the spotlight of being listed on the JSE. If you were bringing these kinds of tenders in while you were listed, I don’t think the shareholders would have let you go.
CRAIG VENTER: You’re right. We’re very proud of the tender, so it’s nice.
ALEC HOGG:  It’s interesting. Maybe you can explain how it works. Reading through the detail, it appears as though it’s there for five years. It’s a fibre optic broadband network, which the country and Gauteng desperately needs. What happens after five years?
CRAIG VENTER: Yes Alec, I think a key aspect of the tender was that we would build, operate, and transfer the tender back to the Gauteng Province after the five-year period. I think it’s great for the economy. It’s great for the skill base of the province, so it’s going to be a lot of training. It’s going to be putting in next generation broadband network, and a VPN (Virtual Private Network) for the Gauteng government – for the province. We’ll then obviously link in a lot of community centres, townships, and hospitals, so it’s a very large contract and I think it’s going to be very good for the province as a whole.
ALEC HOGG:  Talking about that ‘obviously link in’, who is also going to get access to this? We would understand the Gauteng government desperately needs this, but you say…linking townships and hospitals.
CRAIG VENTER: Yes, 20 townships will be fully broadband linked, so that’s part of the contract.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Which ones?
CRAIG VENTER:Â There would be a whole host of them.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Like Soweto?
CRAIG VENTER: Soweto would will have fibre – 20 townships in total, 130,000 government employees will have broadband access, which I think is critical. If you’ll have a look, you’ll see there are probably about 40 community centres. An example of that would be some of the hospitals – Baragwanath Hospital as well, is included as one of the hospitals, so many communities centres, lots of infrastructure, state of the art equipment, good broadband speeds, and fibre to over 300 government buildings. We’ll bring fibre to the government buildings. It’s a very exciting project and something that for me, after having been around in the industry for 26 years actually, was a breath of fresh air to see the government really investing in something I think is going to lift the economy. I think it’s going to generate employment and most importantly, its skills transfer and skills development, which I think is great.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI:Â So what has taken so long, Craig?
CRAIG VENTER: I think this does take a lot of planning, and I think you need to make sure the investments are going into the right areas and the right technologies etcetera. It has taken a little while, but I think one of the good/positive things is that it’s there now and it’s going to be deployed with very stringent milestones, so we know that it’s going to be there, it’s measurable, and that we can make it a success, so I’m very happy. We use a China provider, a global provider who’s with us – Huawei – who are one of the largest Telco infrastructure suppliers around the world. They’re going to be fully involved in the project with us, so we’ll be using a lot of their technology as well. What I like about the project is that it spans the entire Altech Group and the Bytes Group, which is part of Altron. We’re going to leverage off the resource of about five entities across the group that can deliver a project of this magnitude. When you look at the history of the group and the fact that we’ve had Altech as a separately listed company Alec, as you said, we probably weren’t getting the synergies between Altech and Bytes that are so important, especially for a project of this magnitude where you have to tie IT and Telecoms together and deliver a solution. We’re now really seeing the power of the collective of Altech and Bytes working together – even though this was an Altech award. We’re going to leverage off all of that resource and make sure that we deliver a world-class solution to the Gauteng Province.
ALEC HOGG:  It’s wholly owned subsidiaries, of course. Craig, it’s well known that you went into East Africa. It wasn’t successful, but there must have been lessons you learned there, that you’re applying here.
CRAIG VENTER: Undoubtedly. If you look over 26 years, it’s a long period of time to be in the industry and at the end of the day, you look at CEO’s around the world. I think most CEO’s have had a black mark in terms of an investment that maybe wasn’t as good as they’d thought. For the first two years, it was a great investment for us, but you’re not perfect and over 26 years I’m proud of what we’ve delivered and what we’ve done as a group. Altech today, is stronger than it’s ever been. Lessons learned: most surely. I think you learn from those things. Personally, I’ve definitely learned from many of the aspects we dealt with there. I’m just glad that we managed to stand up and move forward, and now we’re stronger than ever.
ALEC HOGG:  And you can apply that, because it’s almost taking the experience in East Africa, which is far away, and applying it locally in your own hometown.
CRAIG VENTER: No, it’s fantastic and I think we have some very good partners as I’ve said, in group resource, but we also have the overseas guys with us that are very experienced in this particular area. At the same time, we’ll be working with Dark Fibre Africa. Seventy percent of the fibre optic cable is already in the ground for this particular project because it’s a next-generation network. It’s about 1600 kilometres of fibre that is going to be required to really provide coverage of 95 percent of Gauteng.
ALEC HOGG:  How many of the communities’ individuals are going to get access to this? I can imagine a guy sitting there, a young entrepreneur in Soweto – thinking ‘my goodness, if I can get one Gig, or up to ten Gigs, as you say of broadband, I’m in it’. Would he?
CRAIG VENTER: Yes, with no problem at all. I think as you’ve correctly said, it really is from one Gig to ten Gigs, so it’s great in terms of the bandwidth speed. It’s great to be able to have the access and the fibre coming straight to the township, the government building, or to the hospital. All of that are things that we as a country, haven’t really had before and most assuredly, not in the province. I think many entrepreneurs will now be able to capitalise on that. Putting a figure on how many obviously is difficult.
ALEC HOGG:  Can he plug in? If he’s sitting in his home in Soweto, is he going to be able to plug into the network?
CRAIG VENTER: Undoubtedly. It’s a full, self-contained, broadband Internet network for the Gauteng Province, and it’s going to have fibre to all of the townships. As I said, 20 townships, 44 community centres, 130,000 government employees. We’re obviously then going to hook up 316 government buildings and subscribers will be able to link into that network. It’s a next-generation network, so it’s totally self-contained. One of the advantages of this tender was also the fact that in the past, the Gauteng government and a lot of South Africa, has been contracting to third parties for networks, data, or broadband. In this case, the Gauteng government’s going to own the network, so they’re not going to have a margin on a margin – if you will – and it will be less costly. I think the cost savings are going to be significant as well, but you’re going to have the skills transfer and you’ll be able to have much better communication for the people of Gauteng.
ALEC HOGG:  Good for you Craig, I’m glad you’re doing it here rather than in other parts of the world. That’s Craig Venter the Chief Executive of Altech.
