ICT

Government’s latest mobile contract is shared by four companies.

Credit: Caspir Camille Ruben on Unsplash

As of 2021, National Treasury has appointed four companies as service providers to government, through its new mobile communication services contract, known as RT15-2021. The contract covers all entities of the state and is expected to allow for significant cost saving through better controls.

The contract, which was previously held by Vodacom, is now shared between Cell C, MTN, Telkom and Vodacom. The transversal contract is for uncapped data for different categories of employees and includes mobile devices for packages from all service providers. Nearly 450 organs of state participated in the previous contract. This included 38 national departments, 99 provincial departments, 106 local government departments and 207 other state institutions.

South Africa has not only been home to many pioneering banking apps on mobile phones, but the country’s operators continue to offer unprecedented innovation and levels of service. Arthur Goldstuck noted these trends in September 2022, further pointing out that the Reserve Bank will also speed up EFTs between banks with the introduction of a Rapid Payments Programme. Bank Zero not only uses biometric authentication for logging in, but offers zero-cost banking. Both MTN and Vodacom are offering much more sophisticated apps than when they first ventured into fintech: MTN MoMo has diverse offerings and VodaPay encompasses payment, lending, insurance and cash for emergencies.

Invicta Holdings, an investment holdings and management company, has expanded into the fibre field at a time when working from home has massively increased the demand for data. Invicta acquired Dartcom Group for R500-million, giving it a presence in the distribution of communication and renewable technologies and the manufacture of fibre optic cables (under licence from Japan). As South Africa joins the global trend towards online shopping and with the first networks rolling out 5G in 2020, data centres are going up all over the country. The latest to join the trend is software company Oracle which has chosen Johannesburg as the headquarters of its African cloud region. All of the company’s cloud regions worldwide will be 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025.

Teraco stores data in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. A second 30MW site is under construction in Brackenfell to complement the existing facility in Rondebosch. Africa Data Centre (ADC), part of the Liquid Telecom Group, has purchased a Tier IV data centre in Johannesburg, previously used by Standard Bank.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria will host a new body aimed at preparing South Africa for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the South African Affiliate Centre of the World Economic Forum. ■

ONLINE RESOURCES

Business Process Enabling SA: www.bpesa.org.za Independent Communications Authority: www.icasa.org.za Technology Innovation Agency: www.tia.org.za SECTOR INSIGHT South African banking apps are world class.