Press & PR

Broadband costs in South Africa may be about to see a large drop after the parliament passed a bill in the country.

On Wednesday, the National Assembly agreed to the Broadband Infraco Bill, which will look to decrease costs in terms of international connectivity and backbone connectivity, iafrica.com reports.

The publication stated that if such outgoings were minimised, then service providers will have to make cuts due to competitive forces.

Alec Erwin, public enterprises minister, defended the need to have a fully state-run organisation and said that the development is a good one for consumers.

'The specific proposals are the following: that we would take responsibility to lead the process for a west coast [communications] cable. This would be a very large capacity cable - we're quite certain bigger than the private sector itself would be prepared to invest in,' he commented.

Internode is to try and improve rural broadband penetration in Australia, it was reported this week.

Currently, there are cheap broadband products available on the market, such as the series of products available from Vonage. With the company, customers can make unlimited calls to 15 countries - South Africa included - with the Vonage V-Plan 2, for just £7.99 a month.