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Broadband Infraco becomes major competitor

Martin Czernowalow
By Martin Czernowalow, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 03 Oct 2014
Competition is required in the market and Broadband Infraco is positioning itself to take on the likes of Telkom, says CEO Puleng Kwele.
Competition is required in the market and Broadband Infraco is positioning itself to take on the likes of Telkom, says CEO Puleng Kwele.

Broadband Infraco is positioning itself to take on Telkom in the backhaul connectivity space, as it aims to attract more customers onto its newly-upgraded high-capacity network.

"There is a requirement for competition," says Broadband Infraco CEO Puleng Kwele, who explains the company just completed a R100 million network upgrade that saw its network capacity increase from 40Gbps to 120Gbps.

Kwele says the company on Wednesday completed migrating Cell C onto its backhaul network, adding it is also in the process of conducting a phased migration of the State IT Agency's new-generation network into its infrastructure.

The company also provides connectivity to Google and has assigned seven links to the South African National Research Network, while Neotel remains a major customer.

Kwele says Broadband Infraco is making a serious play to add several African countries to its portfolio. She says the company is already counting Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho and Botswana among its high-traffic customers.

"It's important for us to look at regional diversification," she says, adding while Telkom remains a significant player in the space, Broadband Infraco has the potential to become a serious competitor.

Strategic upgrade

The latest R100 million "gold triangle" upgrade - including Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban - is 92% finalised. "Most access points were completed earlier in the year and we are still working on finalising upgrades in smaller places, such as Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein," says Kwele.

"Our upgrades are being done very strategically, as we aim to provide really open access to customers with high-traffic requirements."

Kwele says in the next 12 to 18 months, Broadband Infraco plans to spend a further R300 million to R500 million on network investments, and says this expenditure will also serve to help the company fulfil its universal access licence obligations.

While the company still awaits clarity on a general universal access strategy from government, Kwele explains Broadband Infraco will, in the meantime, chase "fundable" projects to provide services to underserviced areas.

"Thus we will see what [potential projects] lie within such state-owned entities such as USAASA [the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA]," she states. "Our plan is to not have a single access point on our network that is not utilised."

In the past two years, the company has seen its customer base grow from four to 15, and Kwele says it is all part of Broadband Infraco's strategy to diversify away from one or two major contracts, to a larger pool of revenue-generating customers.

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