Pretoria – the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), through its subsidiary, Intersite Asset Investments, has entered into a Telecommunications Partnership Agreement (TPA) with Vodacom as part of its ongoing vision to provide quality passenger rail services to its passengers.
The long-term commercial partnership is a culmination of the PRASA telecoms assets commercialisation journey driven by Intersite which began as far back as 2013. Through the commercialisation of its assets, service providers such as Vodacom (and other ICASA licensed companies) will be able to lease PRASA’s dark fibre optic cables for the next for 15 years through Intersite.
The TPA will enable Intersite to start offering and providing ICT services initially to PRASA Group and later on to external entities across South Africa, leveraging PRASA’s telecoms assets (primarily optic fibre and GSM towers) together with Vodacom’s industry expertise, for revenue generation in pursuit of the PRASA Group’s secondary mandate. The scope of ICT services covered under the TPA broadly includes Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS); Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity; Unified Communications & Collaboration (a versatile conferencing solution text, audio, video and virtual white boards and makes them available through a single interface); Metro E Fibre Access; Microwave Access; Dedicated Internet Access; Hosted Exchange; Security Information Event Management; Internet Access.
The commercial value of this deal is estimated to be in excess of R1 billion over a 15-year period. PRASA operations are also expected to benefit through operational efficiencies that could be realised as relevant ICT services are deployed as part of the PRASA operations modernisation programme.
Commenting of the deal, Vuyani Jarana, Chief Officer for Vodacom Business had this to say “We are humbled by the decision of the Intersite Board to choose us as their strategic partner to help them monetise their existing ICT assets. At Vodacom we have long believed in the strategic role to be played by partnerships and alliances to optimise existing ICT asset utilisation in South Africa.”
Intersite CEO, Mr. Cromet Molepo, says that “our mandate as Intersite is to exploit PRASA’s assets through the use of strategic partnerships to create sustainable value that benefits the people of South Africa. Our unique position as Intersite means government, through SOEs, and the private sector can work together as evidenced by our partnership with Vodacom.
PRASA will, in future, also provide free Wi-Fi access to schools within a 5 kilometre radius from its stations thus supporting schools previously without internet access. On the other hand, about 2.5 million a day of PRASA’s commuters will be able to receive secured free Wi-Fi access while they are within PRASA facilities. This will go some way towards the call for data prices to fall (#Datamustfall).