The Parkhurst Residents and Business Owners Association (Praboa) has unanimously decided to award the project to build fibre to homes and businesses in the neighbourhood to Vumatel, a new player in South Africa’s last-mile fibre market.

The project will be the first for Vumatel and will likely serve as a case study for similar deployments around the country.

Praboa technical advisor Ryan Hawthorne says that although it was a difficult decision, the votes were unanimous in favour of Vumatel. “Vumatel’s proposal came out on top, at least partly because it offers open access and has a free line option,” he says.

Hawthorne says there were other proposals that offered open access, but because Vumatel is a smaller company, he feels it will take the project a lot more seriously than bigger operators.

“Its free 4Mbit/s option also appealed to us in order to get the community on board,” he says. “Vumatel offers 20GB of bandwidth on a 4Mbit/s fibre line for about R150/month, and this is a no-brainer for the majority of residents.”

The fibre project is also meant to assist with the roll-out of high-definition closed-circuit television cameras.

“We believe the fibre roll-out will change people’s perspectives on what is possible with broadband.”

The committee reviewed 16 proposals from operators such as MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, Dark Fibre Africa, SA Digital Villages, Atec, Liquid Telecom, ClearlineIS, Posix and Cool Ideas. Security providers Cortac and CSS also submitted proposals.

Hawthorne says it appears that MTN and Vodacom are still in the early phases of their respective fibre deployment plans as the proposals these companies provided only gave indicative pricing and required a much higher uptake by residents.

“Vumatel will, in all likelihood, provide a trenched solution, but there may be some aerial deployment of the fibre in certain areas,” says Hawthorne.

He adds that Vumatel has “exciting plans” for the project and has a “big community engagement plan”.

The company plans to open a shop in the suburb to help residents.

Although the fibre roll-out is expected to take between six and 12 months, Hawthorne expects this to happen sooner. “We just want to manage residents’ expectations.”

An information sharing session with the community will take place within the next two weeks.

Vumatel’s proposal includes a once-off installation fee of R1 500 per household, offering line speeds ranging from 4Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s. 4Mbit/s lines will not attract a line rental fee. A 50Mbp/s option will be charged at R499/month. Vumatel will also offer a 1Gbit/s option at R1 299/month. All Vumatel’s fibre offerings have contract terms of 24 months.

Residents will be able to buy bandwidth from a number of competing providers and cost estimates range between R2/GB and R10/GB. Some providers may also offer uncapped options. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media