Fibre availability has expanded rapidly in South Africa’s major centres in recent years.
This has allowed residents of big cities to gain access to fast and reliable Internet for their homes and businesses.
Unfortunately for South Africans living in smaller towns, fibre is not as widespread.
Instead, they must use less-reliable and often more expensive alternatives such as ADSL and fixed-LTE.
For these citizens, MyBroadband asked South Africa’s leading fibre networks about their plans for connecting the rest of South Africa.
Broadband Infraco
Broadband Infraco said it has fibre spanning about 15,000km in South Africa, with nearly 80% of this covering areas outside of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, and Durban.
Additionally, it has plans in place to increase its current footprint.
Broadband Infraco’s goal is to roll out an additional 1,000km of fibre coverage on their network over the next three years.
These plans, however, are dependent on the SA Connect project as well as other internal business projects.
Funding is the biggest constraint when it comes to the implementation of the SA Connect project, which would pave the way for Broadband Infraco’s proposed network expansion.
Frogfoot
Shane Chorley, head of sales at Frogfoot, told MyBroadband that Frogfoot is in the process of deploying fibre in a number of smaller towns right now, with the intention of expanding across the country.
“We are in the process of deploying in a number of smaller towns and it is our intention to expand that,” said Chorley.
“We launched a national long-distance fibre project in October 2016 that will take high-speed fibre and wireless connectivity to the Eastern belt of the country,” he said.
These towns extend from Witbank through Middelburg, Secunda, Ermelo, Piet Retief, Paulpietersburg, Melmoth, Empangeni, Richards Bay, and Ballito.
Chorley cautions that there are still economic factors to consider, however, meaning that fibre isn’t immediately possible in all of these towns.
For now, he said, fibre is only feasible in Witbank, Middelburg, Empangeni, and Richards Bay.
The rest of the mentioned towns will be covered by “wireless links via a high-capacity backhaul”, said Chorley.
Chorley added that over the next five months, FTTH will also roll out in the following Western Cape towns: Fish Hoek, Capri, Glencairn, Kommetjie, Lakeside, Muizenberg, Noordhoek, San Michel, Simon’s Town, Sun Valley, and Sunnydale.
Source: My Broadband