The South African Research and Education Network (SANReN) is under pressure to meet its target of having 35 university and research campuses connected by December 1, 2009. The R365-million world-class nationwide network, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), is being planned and deployed by the CSIR's Meraka Institute. It has engaged the services of communications service providers Telkom and Neotel for the rollout. The network will be managed by the Tertiary Education Network (TENET). According to a comprehensive answer to a parliamentary question 11 campuses in Gauteng now use the network and work is underway to complete the main component - the national backbone of the SANReN - by December 1, 2009. Additionally the DST expects Meraka to connect a further 24 institutions and campuses in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban by the same deadline. This is extremely ambitious and I hope that it can be met so any technological glitches can be ironed out before the start of the 2010 academic year and SANReN's scheduled completion date of March 31, 2010. The initial focus has been on the planning, design and procurement work necessary for the metropolitan networks that will interconnect institutions within the major cities. Johannesburg's network is complete. The City of Tshwane's network is being installed, proposals have been submitted for Durban's network and discussions are under way with Cape Town. The prompt implementation of SANReN within Cape Town is critical for the transmission of high-speed data from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland to its international research partners. The telescope expects to go live with its research programmes in December. The Telkom high-speed link from SALT terminates at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), Cape Town, from where data will be transmitted - over the yet to be implemented metropolitan network - to the South African Astronomical Observatory, and from there to the undersea Seacom cable to internationally based astronomers. There is some scepticism in the telecommunications industry that the CHPC will be connected to the Cape Town metropolitan network before yearend, let alone the December 1 deadline to which DST has committed. In reply to a parliamentary question specific to SALT, the department has stated that delivery of data to the SALT partnership will be compromised if insufficient bandwidth is not available by yearend and that this would significantly impact the participation by international partners in the final commissioning stages of the telescope. This, the department says, may also negatively reflect on South Africa's ability to host international infrastructure. An early success of SANReN may offset this uncertainty somewhat. One of the first institutions to be connected - Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) - successfully took part in international Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiments which demonstrated the expertise of South Africa's scientists in the international radio-astronomy field. Radio astronomy expertise is critical to South Africa's bid to host the world's largest radio telescope - the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SANReN team is to be complemented on keeping within budget while some of the original specifications changed and expanded during the project lifecycle.