He said providing network connectivity for people who reside in rural areas remains central to Vodacom’s commitment to ensuring digital access for all. “The latest data shows that we are doing much better than our peers in closing the digital gap across the deep rural areas of the Limpopo province, and importantly people from these areas are using the technology confidently to improve their day-to-day lives. Vodacom’s efforts over the last decade, to drive digital inclusion and adoption in Limpopo for the scores of people based in rural areas of the province, also form part of Vodacom Limpopo Region’s long-term vision – to have the widest and best network accessible to the residents of the region, irrespective of where they live. This has come with significant but necessary investment on the part of the Telco, in a bid to meet the ideals envisaged by SA Connect, which aims to deliver widespread broadband access to 90% of the country’s population by 2020, and 100% by 2030,” said Khan.
He told CV that in February 2018 Vodacom deployed the very first base station site in the Duvheledza village, in Thulamela Municipality. “The site was the first to be deployed in the area since the advent of mobile networks in the country. This marked a significant moment as it ushered in a new era of mobile connectivity, opening a new world of possibility through the internet for over 5 000 households in Duvhuledza village, who previously had to travel long distances to the next village to make calls and access the internet. The site was built under the auspices of Vodacom’s rural coverage acceleration programme, which was aimed at expanding network coverage for people who live in deep rural areas of South Africa to supplement the good work that Vodacom regions have done in ramping up network infrastructure outside of urban areas over many years. Vodacom’s commitment to accelerate network coverage for people who live in Duvheledza village has already yielded a significant result. The village now enjoys 100% internet access for all Vodacom customers, and we have seen overall data usage on the site increase by 159% year on year with the 4G site showing a growth of 299%. As a result, school-going children can now access the internet for the first time – which has been critical during Covid-19. About 4000 users from the village are registered on the Vodacom e-School platform and are accessing Grade R-12 learning material free of charge, whilst those who are actively looking for jobs are using their smartphones to apply for jobs over the internet on Vodacom’s zero-rated platforms. Crucially, those who used to travel long distances to do banking are doing this on their smartphones from the comfort of their homes,” he said.
He then said that it’s a good example of rural programme were Vodacom built the site because it was the right time to do to create connectivity to that community. “But now when we look at the usage of the site we see 159% growth and it shows how hungry the community was for the internet. The growth is probably being used by family members to connect and find out what’s going on in the world for social media. It was relevant and important that as Vodacom we must build the site in the rural area was an opportune situation then but now it represent what’s so critically important that has to take place. We are just re-enforces our rural roll out programme and the importance of it. We have being rolling this out because it was right thing to do but now, those 75 sites are life line to the rural communities. This is the true representation of what is being asked us as an industry to take all the community on this 4IR transaction and to ensure that the digitally device does not represent the same old social and economic divided play our country today,” he explains.
He further said Vodacom have given 4G access to approximately 90% of the populations, 3G access which is about 95%, and 2G which is dominantly voice in on 100% of the population. “We take the responsibility place on us with the huge level of obligation and humanity we understand as the largest operating in the country, we have an obligation to ensure all our community are benefiting from this massive industrial and digital revolution that is taking place. We provide 90% mobile connectivity to rural areas and deployed over 50 new rural network sites across the province in this financial year alone. The main focus for us has been education, with the almost 4 000 schools in Limpopo, so we very happy we can make this contribution.
We want to make sure that the Limpopo population has access to world class technology,” he concluded.
