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South Africa: Blue Label Connects Rural Community |
| Source: |
Posted by IT-Online |
| Source Date: |
Monday, January 12, 2015 |
| Focus: |
ICT for MDGs
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| Country: |
South Africa |
| Created: |
Jan 12, 2015 |
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Instead, community members needed to make a long monthly trip at a cost of R200 to go and buy their electricity tokens. Eskom in the meantime provided these communities with free basic electricity while it sought out a permanent prepaid electricity vending solution.
Eskom approached Blue Label Telecoms as one of its online vending agency service providers for a solution, who teamed up with Internet Solutions to build a satellite-based solution.
South African Distribution absorbed the installation cost for the satellites and now pays the monthly operating costs to keep them going. It has also provided the modems and point of sale devices to vending points located within the communities so that consumers can purchase electricity conveniently and hassle free.
Brian Mokgele, national value chain manager (prepayment) at Eskom, comments: “This is certainly a true corporate social investment that will change the lives of the disadvantaged communities in these two remote and rural Namaqualand settlements for the better. The purchase of prepaid electricity for them will henceforth be easy and cost effective.”
Werner van Reenen, CEO of South African Distribution, adds: “People who live in urban areas take the convenience of electronic transactions for granted. Yet there are many people in South Africa who do not yet have access to these services. We are happy that we were able to help these communities by providing them with access to satellite connectivity – we believe that this will have an immediate impact on their quality of life and finances.”
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South Africa: Blue Label Connects Rural Community Blue Label Telecoms subsidiary South African Distribution has installed satellite dishes for two disadvantaged farming communities in the Northern Cape so that families living in these remote areas can purchase prepaid electricity without having to travel long distances to do so The Namaqualand communities of Witbank and Goodhouse both close to the Namibian border are beyond the reach of South Africa’s cellular and fixed-line telecoms networks For that reason there were no prepaid electricity vending points available in these towns
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