LISTENING to Talk Radio 702 in recent weeks, there have been many callers phoning in to complain about the digging up of the roads.
And, while I understand people's irritation at not seeing pavements and roads immediately restored to their former glory, or their rightful anger when their vehicle gets damaged as a result, on the whole it seems the companies rolling out fibre - mostly in and around Sandton and Johannesburg - are doing a pretty responsible job of fixing where they left behind.
I personally get very excited knowing that I am driving over a big fibre optic cable buried in the tarmac beneath my car tyres. Therein lies the key to faster, cheaper broadband. And maybe this prospect makes me a little more tolerant than most.
Most of the irritation seemed to be levelled at Neotel, the second fixed line licensee. But, this is probably because Neotel is the only operator that I've seen placing a board in its distinctive orange colouring near the dig site, with a call centre number that people can phone in to.
In fact, Neotel is not the only one that's digging up the roads. Vodacom, MTN and Telkom are doing the same, as are many of the parastatals for infrastructure other than fibre.
Imagine the difficulty in keeping track of it all, or in making sure one doesn't cut through someone else's cable on the way to laying your own. Even in following the proper municipal approvals and observing the civil engineering maps of the city, accidents do happen.
Distinctive thin line
But, while most of the fibre rollout is happening in the pavements, one company is dropping the fibre directly into the roads.
That's the distinctive thin line you'll have seen snaking along the tarmac on routes like Main Road in Randburg, along Rivonia Road or up Sandton Drive. You may have even seen one of the large machines with the fierce-looking round blade at the back at work cutting the trenches and workers laying big yellow or black plastic-covered cabling into them.
The company that's doing this rollout is called Dark Fibre Africa. It is an infrastructure provider, not a telecoms operator because it does not have a license to offer telecoms services.
And its business model is based on getting as many operators as possible to use it for their fibre cable requirements. Dark Fibre lays the cable - which has many strands of fibre in it and enough capacity for everyone - and sells the separate pipes to the operators.
CEO Richard Came says because the actual civil engineering part of laying cable constitutes 70% to 80% of the cost, this should be a compelling way for the operators to rollout their networks. It also means the disruptions could be cut to a minimum, by having one operator, not five or ten down the line, laying cable along the same route at different junctures.
It generally fills these trenches neatly with tar within days, but had a problem with some equipment and asphalt shortages, so there is a backlog on some routes which it Came says it should have sorted out by the end of June.
Doing it themselves
So far, Dark Fibre has two of the licensed operators as clients - Vodacom and another operator, which prefers not to be named - and hopes to get all of them on board in the near future. It has also spoken to the broadcasters, and other telco service providers that could also get infrastructure licenses down the line.
Some of the operators seem to prefer to do it themselves. Others don't like the idea that Dark Fibre effectively has to piggyback on their license to be able to roll out the cable.
Nonetheless, it seems a clever way of doing things and Came thinks the market will wake up to this as it matures.
So far, Dark Fibre has four machines working - mostly around Gauteng, but it has started in Durban and will shortly commence in Cape Town - and a fifth that needs commissioning. But, Came says it anticipates having 11 on the roads by year-end, rolling out 130km of fibre optic cabling a month.
Listed companies that are also benefiting from the vast rollout are the cabling manufactures and suppliers, Altech's Powertech, Reunert's CIB-Electric, and Jasco, after its recent purchase of a 34% stake in M-Tec.
When you next get caught up in traffic on the way to a meeting, and you see it's a fibre optic cabling rollout that's held you up, sit back, call your boss on your handfree and tell him its because of the broadband. He or she will understand.
- Fin24.com