Altech Alcom Matomo has been awarded the tender to build, operate and maintain a province-wide broadband network that will offer broadband fibre access to Gauteng Provincial Government owned buildings, Thusong centres, economic zones and 20 priority townships for a period of five years.
Thereafter, the network will be transferred to the Gauteng Provincial Government.
“We are humbled to have been awarded this significant tender for the implementation of the Gauteng Provincial Government’s Broadband Network (GBN). This is an important milestone for the Altron TMT group, under which Altech resides, and we are committed to assisting the Gauteng Provincial Government in delivering vital broadband infrastructure to the citizens of Gauteng, while ensuring the development of SMEs and the transfer of skills in the process,” says Craig Venter, group executive: Altron TMT and CEO of Altech.
“The Gauteng Broadband Network tender attracted a lot of interest from major telecommunications providers in the South African market and I am extremely proud of the Altron TMT team that worked tirelessly for some 12 months in ensuring our success in being awarded the tender.
“The award of the tender was further assisted by our close relationship with Chinese global technology giant Huawei and their support in positioning Altech as their preferred partner. Huawei will provide a large component of the network equipment,” he adds.
The conceptualisation, construction and maintenance of the broadband network will incorporate 1 600km of high-speed fibre optics and provide network coverage to 95% of Gauteng’s population.
The tender specifies that the broadband network will connect 316 Gauteng Provincial Government buildings, forty-five identified Thusong Centres, twenty priority townships, nine identified Economic Development Zones and six urban renewal nodes. The solution will provide voice and data services for 130 000 Gauteng Provincial Government employees in Gauteng.
“The Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN) is central to the Gauteng Provincial Government’s ICT strategy to transform Gauteng into a ‘Smart Province and a connected Global City Region’ in order to deliver converged services such as video, voice, and data to the Provincial Government, and its related entities. As the largest privately owned converged solutions provider on the African continent, Altron TMT is ideally placed with its vast expertise and skills set to develop a project of this magnitude,” says Venter.
“Furthermore, the completion of the network infrastructure will encourage the development of an advanced workforce with better ICT skills and, most importantly, increase the ICT skills capacity within the public sector. Aligned to this, bringing broadband services to the Gauteng province will bridge the digital divide and have a positive impact on e-teaching, e-learning and e-government,” he adds.
While the tender was awarded to Altech Alcom Matomo, their efforts will be supported by various other businesses within the Altron TMT group.
“The creation of Altron TMT during the latter part of last year was the result of the increasing convergence that we see between the Telecommunications, Multi-media and Information Technology sectors and by bringing Altech and Bytes Technology Group together under a single organisation we are now reaping the power of the collective in terms of putting forward the best possible combination of products, solutions and services to our customers,” Venter says.
The entire solution will include the core infrastructure and overlaid services, which will consist of:
- The design, implementation and operation of a Next Generation Network (NGN), and a core network that provides a Virtual Private Network (MPLS/VPN) of converged network services;
- Fibre access network connectivity to Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) buildings;
- Improved universal access by providing connectivity to community service centres;
- Fibre connectivity to twenty identified priority townships.
The services will include:
- Internet services with a bandwidth of 1 or 10 Gigabytes (symmetrical or asymmetrical);
- VPN services;
- Telephony services.
The duration of the contract will be:
- Five years for the design, implementation, operation, and transfer (BoT);
- Optical fibre to be leased from both private and public sector entities;
- The network will ultimately be transferred and owned by the Gauteng Provincial Government at the end of the five year term.
