Minister: Free data for all households on the cards
Communications Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced their plans to provide all households with free data.
POLOKWANE – “At some point South Africa will say that every South African household, whether you are rich or poor, employed or unemployed, will have access to 10GB of data per month.”
These were the words of Communications Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni as she addressed day two of the State of the Nation Address Debate at the City Hall in Cape Town on Tuesday (February 15).
Ntshavheni promised that this data allocation will be delivered ‘without failure’. She said that data has become a new utility such as water and electricity.
“We are working on a Radio Frequency Spectrum Policy for embedding the 5G network and there are preparations for advances to the sixth and seventh generation networks. The policy will also allow us to provide 10GB of data to homes on a monthly basis,” Ntshavheni explained.
— Khumbudzo Ntshavheni (@Khu_Ntshavheni) February 16, 2022
A date for the rollout of the data to households was not announced by the minister.
The announcement follows Deputy Minister Pinky Kekana’s address in the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ strategic plan for 2020 to 2025.
“The next five years will be critical to the DCDT, to address the issue of the ‘Cost to Communicate’. We will work on a resolution with the large mobile operators to reduce data prices across pre-paid monthly bundles, with additional discounts targeted at low income households as well as free daily allocation of data and free access to educational, employment, and other public interest websites,” the deputy minister said in the plan.
