Telkom will roll out fibre to 20 suburbs in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg by the end of the calendar year.
CEO Sipho Maseko says the direct fibre-to-the-premises project will be provided to suburbs such as Kloof, Houghton, Reservoir Hills, Rosebank, Morningside, Bryanston, Camps Bay and Bishops Court.
Maseko notes "there are very clear plans in place," quipping that people should move to the selected suburbs if they do not already live there.
A few months ago, Telkom's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) trial, comprising the up to 100Mbps resell DSL and fibre access line, started in selected areas, including the upmarket suburbs of Houghton, in Johannesburg; Celtisdal, in Centurion; Loevenstein, in the Western Cape; and Sea Point, in Cape Town.
Maseko says the rollout is the first wave of its push to connect more people to faster Internet. Once fibre is in every home and every business in the selected suburbs, the operator would look at the next wave, which he hopes will be bigger.
Telkom is using a combination of technologies - such as fibre and long-term evolution (LTE) - to get high-speed technology to end-users. It will also expand LTE coverage so that more suburbs are connected. "We don't want to keep anyone in the past.
"This rollout is a precursor of many exciting prospects that Telkom is working towards. With speeds of 100Mbps on the fibre network and peak speeds of 100Mbps on the home LTE network, the concept of the connected home becomes a lot more tangible and the possibility for value-added services is within reach," says Maseko.
Telkom currently has 475 144 active VDSL ports and says 400 000 South African homes can already be supplied with VDSL connectivity with up to 20Mbps and 40Mbps services.
MTN and Vodacom are also investing heavily in fibre, with MTN saying it would deploy "aggressive deployment" of FTTH to high-density urban areas, like upmarket gated communities, boomed-off suburbs and high-rise buildings.
Vodacom will start targeting homes next year, but for now is focused on business use, CEO Shameel Joosub has said.
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