At a time when South African telcos and Internet service providers (ISPs) are jostling to roll out last mile connectivity to consumers, local start-up One Cloud Internet is looking to take them on with its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services.
Last month, Telkom revealed that it is working towards launching FTTH services commercially before the end of the year. MTN and Vodacom had earlier revealed similar plans.
FTTH, also referred to as fibre-to-the-building, is the installation of optical fibre from a telephone switch directly into the subscriber's home.
In an interview with ITWeb, Rudzani Matshatshe, president of One Cloud Internet, said the company is currently looking for areas that have the highest demand for Internet connectivity.
He believes the reason telcos and ISPs are looking to enter the FTTH market is the demand they see from their clients.
"What South Africa really needs is a service provider who says it is willing to invest heavily into last mile access for consumers, and the barrier that has kept any penetration into this market has always been installation costs," he said.
"Our packages are affordable and are family-friendly, where one person can sign up their family and allocate how much data and bandwidth each individual would be able to use. Normal installation costs are R1 299 and the One Cloud PW-RN501 router is valued at R1 199."
According to Matshatshe, the company has a deal with some investors that would allow it to install FTTH services to the first 1 000 customers at no charge, with speeds of up to 100Mbps.
"As soon as we identify the area with the most users looking for high-speed Internet alternatives, we will install the fibre connection at no charge to the client. We will even throw in a wireless WiFi router for accessing the Internet once the installation is complete - still at no cost to our customer," he said.
The start-up expects to commence installation of services after it receives a minimum of 10 000 requests from a certain area.
"This process is expected to take no more than two weeks from the date of any announcements and we will keep all our clients informed every step of the way through e-mail updates and through our blog on our Web site.
"Once we have received the minimum required request for installation, we will announce the 1 000 clients who will be the recipients of the first installations and allow them to update the public on the quality of Internet they receive from One Cloud Internet," Matshatshe explained.
Regarding infrastructure, One Cloud Internet has access to existing fibre lines laid out all across Gauteng, Durban and Cape Town from various service providers that it is able to leverage from.
FTTH is new to the South African market and it brings along with it opportunities for online businesses to be born as people start to make use of the Internet for learning, teaching, downloading or communicating with friends, he concluded.
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