Telkom wants to deploy fibre to 25 000 homes by the end of March 2015, its group CEO, Sipho Maseko, said in Port Elizabeth on Monday.
Speaking at Telkom’s annual Satnac technology conference, Maseko said the company’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network has already reached 2 000 South African homes.
In a first phase of its fibre deployment, Telkom is rolling out fibre to 23 suburbs in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. The main focus for now, though, is on Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. It intends offering consumers access speeds of 100Mbit/s.
Suburbs in Gauteng that have been identified are Groenkloof, Brooklyn in Pretoria and Houghton Estate, Bryanston, Sandhurst, Westcliff, Rosebank, Craighall, Craighall Park, Illovo, Parktown North, Hyde Park and Parkhurst in Johannesburg.
In Durban, areas identified are Kloof (Winston Park and Everton are included) and Reservoir Hills.
Cape Town suburbs are the Foreshore, Bishopscourt, Camps Bay (including Clifton and Bakoven) and Plattekloof.
“We are targeting to pass 25 000 homes the end of our financial year, by March 2015,” Maseko said on Monday. “As of now we have passed 2 000 homes directly with FTTH [and] if you include fibre to the kerb, it’s about 600 000.”
Telkom is expected to announce its FTTH pricing next month. It’s expected to be aggressively priced.
Maseko used the Satnac conference to again say that Telkom is well positioned to work with government on a national broadband network to connect underserved parts of the country.
He said infrastructure-based competition in underserved areas is “quite simply not affordable” and a “very inefficient use of capital”.
“To achieve wide access to broadband, we need new models of investing in infrastructure,” he said.
“We need government, operators and vendors to collaborate in the provision of infrastructure. As part of our turnaround, we have given this much thought. We are ideally positioned as anchor in the national broadband plan.
“Telkom can … provide and manage a lean and efficient telecoms infrastructure that will enable competition in the services layer for the benefit of both the consumer and the industry.” — (c) 2014 NewsCentral Media
