FibreCo, the fibre-optic telecommunications joint venture between Convergence Partners, Cell C and Dimension Data’s Internet Solutions, is keen to extend its fibre network further into Southern Africa, working with partners to do it.

Convergence Partners chairman Andile Ngcaba tells TechCentral that by the third quarter of next year FibreCo hopes to have completed its leg from Johannesburg to Cape Town, which extends through the Eastern Cape cities of East London and Port Elizabeth. After that, it plans to extend the cable system — which will eventually amount to 12 000km of infrastructure — to Durban “in joint projects with others” to create another fibre ring across the country.

At the same time, though, Ngcaba says FibreCo, which is spending R5bn in the open-access network, is exploring opportunities to provide cross-border links through Botswana and on to markets such as Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The company is also considering building a link across the SA-Mozambique border to the Seacom undersea cable landing station in Maputo. “That route [from Johannesburg] is even shorter than the Durban route,” Ngcaba says.

Convergence Partners is a minority shareholder in the Seacom system, which runs from Mtunzini on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast to India and France.

FibreCo is being built by partner ZTE of China with China Development Bank providing at least some of the initial debt financing for the project.