Telecoms industry professional and former Dimension Data director Richard Came has acquired a 10% shareholding in Conduct Telecommunications - a last-mile fibre provider - for an undisclosed amount.
Came, who is also a shareholder in Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), will be appointed as chairman of the Conduct board as of next month.
Currently president of the FTTH Council, Came has been a player in SA's fibre-optic arena for many.
Conduct is a last-mile fibre-optic telecommunications operator, which invests in open access fibre in the last-mile, proactively connecting commercial premises to dark fibre. It then provides the fibre to third-party Internet service providers, and sells capacity and services on the connections to their clients.
Came says Conduct has great growth potential, considering fibre is new to the local enterprise market. "There has been significant investment in both long-haul and metropolitan networks by the likes of DFA and other operators to support the needs of the mobile operators. This has created a tremendous potential capacity for bandwidth, but the means for ordinary businesses and citizens to access this remains limited."
He says this is mainly due to the fact that the cost to access this infrastructure has remained prohibitive. "Conduct is changing this. If we get it right, and it is a very real challenge for us still, Conduct will benefit not only the end-user, but also the metro-networks as it drives utilisation of existing infrastructure."
Conduct CEO Johan Pretorius says the company is in talks with other investors and will be making announcements shortly.
Pretorius says Came will be an invaluable asset to the company. "He will be instrumental in our efforts to fast track the rollout of last-mile fibre optics to key precincts in high-density business areas."
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