Neotel's roll-out of fibre has come far enough for it to now offer around 300 businesses access to what it calls “true broadband”.
Executive head of technology Angus Hay says the company's 4 000km roll-out of fibre now touches the doorsteps of around 300 businesses centres, and has already connected 150 of them to its fibre network.
Neotel started the fibre rush in SA almost two years ago, sparking almost all local telecoms providers to begin digging trenches to fit their own cabling. Its links to Transnet's fibre infrastructure have also given it a small boost.
The company now says the market is ripe for transition to “true broadband”. Hay points out that businesses can take advantage of 10Mbps speeds or faster, with the fibre to the building project.
The company targets shopping centres and large businesses, while its metro fibre covers the primary business districts in the metropolitan areas (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban).
“Coupled with its national long distance fibre backbone, the first phase of which we expect to be completed by July, Neotel is offering businesses a true Internet experience,” notes Hay.
He says that despite what many believe, wireless technologies are not always the right way to go in the South African context. “The reality is that fibre is the only way that you can get truly high-speed Internet.”
Gaining ground
While the concept of broadband to the business is not new, with both Vodacom and MTN in on the action already, Neotel has a slight advantage, specifically with its affiliation with Broadband Infraco. It also has one of the fastest growing data centres in the country, offering hosted services.
The company says its data centre has already sold out phase one, and has had to step up phase two of the sales. Telkom followed hot on the heels of Neotel's success, pushing its own data centre agenda, called Cyber Nest; however, it is not clear how many customers it has on board.
With its own investment and landing of the Seacom undersea cable, and its parent company's investments in almost every undersea cable in the world, Neotel poses serious competition.
Hay says the company has signed on in excess of 600 business customers, including the big four banks, a likely sore loss for Telkom. Neotel's plans to target 50 000 consumer customers by March are slightly off; however, Hay says it should reach its target soon, since it has roughly 43 000 consumers.
Neotel did not comment on the possibility of fibre to the home, but having the links inside dense districts means the option is not far off.
Many local telcos have noted that having fibre to the home in the South African context is not feasible since the country is vast, and geographically spread out. However, Hay says, the geography of the cities is much like any country globally doing the same thing, meaning it is possible to get true broadband to the South African consumer.
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