ADDRESSING ACCESSIBILITY, AFFORDABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY BARRIERS FOR BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS AND PENETRATION IN RURAL AREAS

It has been said that the spread of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and global interconnectedness has a great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the “digital divide” and to develop knowledge societies, in countries where it is available. However, it has also been determined that certain barriers, more prevalent in rural communities, pose an incessant impediment to the access and penetration trends of broadband internet networks and infrastructure in rural areas. These barriers have been identified as ‘accessibility’, ‘affordability’, and ‘sustainability’. It is hereby asserted, therefore, that a concerted effort is required to address these barriers, with great deliberation and haste, if digital inclusion is to be achieved in rural areas. This paper proposes a broadband internet system that is aimed at addressing these barriers, through a proposed model, which is intended to be implemented as a Proof of Concept (PoC) in the rural area of Mbazwana, located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa (SA). The model has been presented to the community, and subsequently followed by a survey to determine the feasibility of the implementation thereof. This paper will present the proposed model, as well as the results obtained from the research conducted.