Dr. Willie Oosthuysen was one of the speakers today at the first ICT Indaba 2012, held by the department of communications in Cape Town.
''We [South Africa and Africa] have to take a longer term approach. We have to look at upstream innovation as well as downstream innovation. Upstream innovation is like manufacturing set-top boxes (STBs) and creating new software and intellectual property which will allow us to export commercial software into other countries and which will give us royalty fees - instead of just importing everything. Downstream innovation is creating jobs in those areas. It's about having a more longer term vision going beyond merely manufacturing STBs.
Dr. Willie Oosthuysen talked about, and showed what is available elsewhere in the world, for instance the Free STB in France where he lived for a while and which is one of the multimedia value-added services products available. It gave his household 400 TV channels - several of which in high definition (HD), as well as other services.
"It gave 20Mbps download speed guaranteed, voice was free. As we get over time in South Africa more and more value-added services, this is where operators will become price competitive."
Under his list of recommendations for government regarding the DTT process, dr. Willie Oosthuysen had "removing all bottlenecks in the way of DTT and providing a clear framework for the utilisation of the digital dividend".
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