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Cape Town - Mobile operator MTN has said that South Africans will soon see the fruits of its intention to roll out fibre broadband connectivity to homes (FTTH).
The company has been on a drive to roll out fibre and recently concluded a deal with Afrihost, though the takeover is subject to regulatory approval.
"There are currently MTN's customers who are experiencing this technology on a pilot programme; MTN is also in the process of finalising its FTTH solutions, which will be available in the next couple of weeks," Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, chief enterprise business officer at MTN SA told Fin24.
Fibre broadband is accepted as much faster than copper and mobile operators have been investing heavily into fibre technology as backhaul to their networks.
The idea to expand the fibre connectivity to homes and businesses may make commercial sense as spectrum allocation for high speed mobile networks like LTE (Long Term Evolution) continues to be delayed in South Africa.
Data growth
MTN said that the fibre expansion to homes and businesses was not dependent exclusively on Afrihost.
"At present MTN's FTTH programme is driven by its own channels; it is however MTN's intention to take several of its products to Afrihost and other key reseller partners in the medium term," said Lambotharan.
Vodacom has also reached agreement with Neotel to roll out fibre to the home, but Lambotharan insisted that the Afrihost deal was not a reactionary move.
"No, this was not in reaction to competitor activity. Afrihost is a leading South African hosting and internet service provider with an established subscriber base in the consumer and small and medium enterprise markets. MTN South Africa expects to leverage off Afrihost's strong customer service, value proposition and agility."
The demand for high speed mobile data is set to increase exponentially. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Data demand is set to boom in the Sub-Saharan region and most of the new connections are expected to be mobile as the lack of spectrum and infrastructure makes mobile technologies attractive.
According to data from Ericsson's Mobile Data Traffic Growth report for 2013 to 2019, the Sub-Saharan region's data appetite is huge and expected to grow at 65% to 2019 and beyond.
Put into perspective, mobile data in the region was at 37 000 terabytes (TB) per month in 2013, and that will jump to 76 000TB by the end of 2014, on its way to a mammoth 764 000TB by the end of 2019.
Expectations
However, despite that, fibre is critical to mobile networks to offload the huge data traffic and it is a small hop to expand that network to home- and corporate-based fibre connections.
Lambotharan said that the operator was keenly aware of the appetite for data and wanted to position itself to meet customer expectations over the next three years.
"MTN expects significant strides being made towards bridging the digital divide, thereby increasing the internet penetration levels we currently observe. With the advent of LTE, it is expected that special focus will be on the provision of high speed mobile broadband."
Financial terms of the deal between MTN and Afrihost were not disclosed.
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The company has been on a drive to roll out fibre and recently concluded a deal with Afrihost, though the takeover is subject to regulatory approval.
"There are currently MTN's customers who are experiencing this technology on a pilot programme; MTN is also in the process of finalising its FTTH solutions, which will be available in the next couple of weeks," Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, chief enterprise business officer at MTN SA told Fin24.
Fibre broadband is accepted as much faster than copper and mobile operators have been investing heavily into fibre technology as backhaul to their networks.
The idea to expand the fibre connectivity to homes and businesses may make commercial sense as spectrum allocation for high speed mobile networks like LTE (Long Term Evolution) continues to be delayed in South Africa.
Data growth
MTN said that the fibre expansion to homes and businesses was not dependent exclusively on Afrihost.
"At present MTN's FTTH programme is driven by its own channels; it is however MTN's intention to take several of its products to Afrihost and other key reseller partners in the medium term," said Lambotharan.
Vodacom has also reached agreement with Neotel to roll out fibre to the home, but Lambotharan insisted that the Afrihost deal was not a reactionary move.
"No, this was not in reaction to competitor activity. Afrihost is a leading South African hosting and internet service provider with an established subscriber base in the consumer and small and medium enterprise markets. MTN South Africa expects to leverage off Afrihost's strong customer service, value proposition and agility."
The demand for high speed mobile data is set to increase exponentially. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
Data demand is set to boom in the Sub-Saharan region and most of the new connections are expected to be mobile as the lack of spectrum and infrastructure makes mobile technologies attractive.
According to data from Ericsson's Mobile Data Traffic Growth report for 2013 to 2019, the Sub-Saharan region's data appetite is huge and expected to grow at 65% to 2019 and beyond.
Put into perspective, mobile data in the region was at 37 000 terabytes (TB) per month in 2013, and that will jump to 76 000TB by the end of 2014, on its way to a mammoth 764 000TB by the end of 2019.
Expectations
However, despite that, fibre is critical to mobile networks to offload the huge data traffic and it is a small hop to expand that network to home- and corporate-based fibre connections.
Lambotharan said that the operator was keenly aware of the appetite for data and wanted to position itself to meet customer expectations over the next three years.
"MTN expects significant strides being made towards bridging the digital divide, thereby increasing the internet penetration levels we currently observe. With the advent of LTE, it is expected that special focus will be on the provision of high speed mobile broadband."
Financial terms of the deal between MTN and Afrihost were not disclosed.
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