Despite scepticism in some quarters that Telkom’s plan to deploy fibre broadband past a million homes in South Africa by March 2018 — just two-and-a-half years from now — is too ambitious, Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko has said he is confident the company will not only meet its target but could even exceed it.
Maseko told TechCentral on the sidelines of the company’s annual Satnac conference in the Western Cape on Monday that instead of adopting a piecemeal approach to fibre-to-the-home deployment in South Africa, Telkom will begin building fibre across entire suburbs at a time as it puts its foot on the roll-out accelerator.
He said Telkom intends doubling its investments in fibre to the home and fibre to the business.
Telkom’s wholesale and networks business, which is in charge of the roll-out, has the capacity to ramp up the deployment, despite letting go of thousands of employees in the past 12 months, he added.
To put the scale of the plan in context, Telkom has just over a million copper ADSL broadband users.
Of course, the million fibre homes isn’t the targeted number of connections Telkom is expecting, but rather the number of homes that will be eligible to take up fibre services.
Speaking at Satnac on Monday, Maseko said that Telkom had passed 38 000 homes with its fibre cables so far.
By December 2015, Telkom will have passed 70 000 homes with its fibre network, Maseko said. This will grow quickly to 150 000 by March next year and half a million by the end of 2016.
The aggressive ramping up of its home fibre roll-out comes as the company is facing a big threat to its core business of fixed lines from a number of challengers, including companies such as Dark Fibre Africa, Vumatel and Link Africa, which have started wiring up suburbs in the big cities, replacing Telkom’s copper local loop into homes and businesses.
Vumatel said last week that it expects to have extended its fibre network past 100 000 homes by the end of 2016.
Maseko emphasised that Telkom is committed to the principle of providing open access to its infrastructure. He promised to open the company’s telephone exchanges to rivals. This will start with providing open access to 200 of these sites, he said. Already, Telkom is deploying its home fibre network on an open-access basis, he said. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
