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Development of the Strategy
The Rural Telecommunications Strategy is the culmination of several elements
comprising stakeholder consultations, village surveys, detailed analysis, discussion
points and recommendations. The strategy was developed with the assistance of
more than sixty organisations from government departments, private sector and
non governmental organisations throughout the country. The strategy is a synopsis
of the key deliverables that have preceded it. The following gives a summary of
complementary reports that have been issued in the course of the formulation of
the strategy. The detailed reports are available for reference.
Goals and Objectives - This report sets out the rural telecommunications program
goals and objectives. The goals and objectives take into account the provision of
services, the use of cost effective technologies, the use of appropriate funding
models and the introduction of competition. The report also contains the definition
of rural as it relates to the provision of telecommunications service and establishes
the eligibility criteria to be applied to a village to see whether it qualifies for the rural
program.
Implementation Strategy – The Implementation Strategy addresses and makes
recommendations on regulatory, commercial and technical issues. It also declares
the operations, maintenance, and funding concerns of the program. It is this
document which outlines the requisite licensing framework and interconnection
regimes for the successful implementation of the program. It further charts an
appropriate funding model envisaged to secure the rural program sustainability.
Licensing and interconnection templates for rural telecommunications model have
also been developed.
Rollout Plan – This deliverable provides the framework and guidelines for the
rollout of the program. It calls for the transparent identification of eligible villages
which must be provided with service under the program. In addition, it
recommends that the identified villages should be prioritised and grouped
according to the criteria developed in the report. The report recommends the
division of the country into four areas for purposes of financial sustainability, logical
network implementation and operational efficiency among several reasons.
Selection and Monitoring – An open tender process has been recommended to
be used to provide services in the rural areas in order to enable a competitive
environment in service provisioning. The report focused on the issues and
resources that will be required to implement the program via the open tender
process. This deliverable has produced templates that will be used during the
tendering process. A service level agreement template for the monitoring of the
operations and maintenance of the resulting infrastructure has also been
developed.
Rural Telecommunications Strategy
26 October 2006
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