Once municipalities understand why they need to modernise, the next question is where to start. Connectivity is the practical foundation for digital municipal services. Fragmented networks add cost, complexity and risk, while a more cohesive approach enables cloud, data, analytics, IoT and smarter municipal services.

South Africa’s Roadmap for the Digital Transformation of Government puts computer and network infrastructure at the base of its digital public infrastructure stack to support other key components such as digital identity, data exchange, payments and services, but for many local municipalities, the connectivity foundation remains fragmented, inadequate and overly expensive.

This is despite initiatives such as the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ SA Connect project. Aiming to bring universal, affordable and reliable internet access to all citizens and government facilities, Phase 2 of the project deployed approximately 1 180km of new fibre, connecting over 6 343 government facilities and enabling broadband coverage for about 5.5 million households through Wi-Fi hotspots and supporting infrastructure. While progress was made during the rollout, it focused primarily on selected rural district municipalities and fell short of its ambitious initial targets.

This has left most municipalities across the country dependent on a combination of SITA connectivity, commercial fibre and mobile telecoms solutions, and local wireless and satellite solutions, with telecoms spend accounting for a significant portion of their annual ICT budgets¹.

BMI-T reports that the National Treasury 2025 Budget shows that 173 local municipalities have a total overall ICT budget of R5.5 billion for the three-year period to FY2027/28, of which R3.6 billion is allocated for IT and R1.9 billion on telecoms. Telecoms has a CAGR of 1.9% for the four years to 2027/28; mobile is set to grow at 6.9%, and internet is set to decline at 15.5%, while fixed voice has a CAGR of 3.0%. In 21 secondary cities, almost a third of the total ICT spend of R2.3 billion will be on telecoms.

Fragmented communications networks are not ideal for municipalities: they may inflate costs unnecessarily, and disconnected systems are harder to secure and monitor than integrated systems. In addition, running scores of accounts with numerous service providers adds complexity to accounts management.

Various core connectivity technologies may be deployed for different use cases, however. 5G and private LTE may be best suited for high-bandwidth, ultra-low-latency use cases such as autonomous vehicles and real-time security video feeds. Low-power wide-area networks might be deployed for low-data municipal assets such as smart water meters, waste management bins and street lighting. Fibre is often seen as the best high-capacity backbone and backhaul transport layer. Integrated into a smart city management platform or unified network management system, these solutions offer the appropriate levels of connectivity at the right cost with the benefits of centralised management.

BCX enables the reliable, low latency business broadband and connectivity services smart municipalities need to benefit from cloud services, advanced analytics and smart city IoT solutions. BCX helps municipalities assess their current environment and assists in developing a right-fit connectivity roadmap.

BCX also deploys secure SD-WAN network tools to simplify and secure multi-cloud environments, software-defined networking (SDN) for self-organising, centrally managed networks, and network security solutions for secure, compliant environments.

A cohesive connectivity strategy starts with understanding the current environment. BCX’s Municipal Digital Readiness Assessment helps municipalities evaluate network infrastructure, workloads, cloud readiness and data environments to identify gaps, prioritise investment and build a practical roadmap for digital transformation.

Take the Municipal Digital Readiness Assessment and begin planning the way forward.

1. BMI-T: SA ICT spend in local government 2025