Residents of the North East District are set to enjoy improved telephone services through the revival of the Nteletsa Project.
This new service will be provided through the Fixed Wireless Terminals Connections and will result with the expansion of the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) network.
Addressing the North East District Council, BTC Acting CEO Keabetswe Segole said the Corporation is alive to the fact that telecommunication services are a major socio-economic driver and thus had to resuscitate the Nteletsa Project since many villages now have electricity.
Provision of telephone services in the North East District was mostly covered by the Nteletsa I project, which was powered by solar panels. Unfortunately, the panels were stolen at an alarming rate rendering the phones useless. BTC was spending millions of pula replacing the panels but for every three panels replaced, two were stolen as soon as they were replaced. This was unsustainable, hence many faults were reported and many villages remained without services.
“The Corporation has embarked on a project to replace those phones with new technology called Fixed Wireless Terminals (FWT) connections. These FWT’s can only be installed where we have the GSM or beMOBILE network coverage,” Segole said.
Roll-out to villages such as Mbalambi, Sekakangwe, Jackalas 1, Mambo and Letsholathebe, which are yet to be covered by the beMOBILE network, is expected to begin in the near future.
The Nteletsa telecommunications programme has so far enabled the introduction of communication services to almost all the villages in the North East. This is a significant effort by BTC and Government, through the Private Public Partnership (PPP) to realize that people are connected.
BTC expects that by taking advantage of these services, community lives will be vastly improved. New business opportunities will also be created for entrepreneurial individuals to operate more so with the arrival of beMOBILE.
“As you are aware, access to knowledge, information and communication is crucial to the development of any country today. At BTC we are playing our part. Through enabling fixed and mobile communication societal members can interact, despite large physical distances,” Segole concluded.
He also appealed to councilors to urge Batswana and others to desist from stealing and damaging BTC property. The Corporation, he said has been hit by a spate of cable theft which has resulted in service disruptions.
