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Four more Johannesburg suburbs get fibre broadband

Cape Town -  More Johannesburg suburbs are in line to get fibre to the home service as Vumatel rolls out broadband on a ask-and-build basis.

Victory Park, Linden, Bryanston South and Blairgowrie will become the latest areas to access the service and they join Killarney, Riviera, Saxonwold and Parkwood where construction is slated for July 2015.

"Together with the newly announced suburbs, this brings the tally to eleven confirmed 'fibrehoods' within the relatively short time since announcing the Parkhurst endorsement in July 2014," said Niel Schoeman, CEO of Vumatel.

The company has so far connected 5 000 homes to its open access networks which allow multiple service providers to offer broadband access.

"The separation of the services layer from the infrastructure has resulted in the infrastructure being shared across all the service providers, resulting in the capital being efficiently used. This level playing field from the infrastructure perspective has resulted in fierce competition among the service providers for the customer's business by differentiating on price, value added services offered, eg Voip, or through customer service," Schoeman told Fin24.

Open access

However, while open access has been largely government policy, it has proved difficult to implement in practice because of the money invested in large networks.

"We have seen some announcements on open access being offered to service providers by other smaller networks and Telkom, but whether all the major network owners will follow suit only time will tell," Schoeman added.

The principle of open access networks means that the infrastructure provider is not hamstrung by having to roll out services on the hardware, relieving a key concern of intellectual property compromise, said Schoeman.

Vumatel installation costs R1 500 and consumers have to shop for an ISP for internet services on the network.


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