Hard on the heels of yesterday’s news about its sister company Vumatel’s success in the South African FTTH market, fibre infrastructure provider Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has launched a R400 million (about US$21 million) fibre network infrastructure expansion project.
The news came in the form of a statement from Maziv, the parent company of both DFA and Vumatel.
Quoted in a number of local news outlets, Maziv says the reason for the expansion was to enhance provision of connectivity hardware to allow high-speed connectivity to more businesses and contribute to South Africa’s digital transformation efforts, “enabling greater access to online services and improving economic growth”.
This isn’t unexpected. The project has apparently been in trial phase since February and is now being rolled out at scale.
News resource MyBroadband says DFA will deploy 800 additional dry underground distribution cabinets (DUDCs) as part of the upgrade project. These units have been developed and manufactured in South Africa to DFA’s specifications.
Maziv says the additional units will dramatically shorten the distance data travels from the customer and over the network using dedicated cables, ensuring the shortest possible installation times and, Maziv suggests, reduced downtime during repairs and maintenance activities. The infrastructure upgrade will be carried out in three phases over roughly 18 months.
The project should also accommodate future growth and demand on the network, with the ability to scale up fibre deployment to meet demand as it increases.
This news comes a week after South Africa’s Competition Commission blocked a Vodacom takeover of Vumatel and DFA, though the proposal may now be taken to the country’s Competition Tribunal.
