South Africa: Vumatel tops 2 million homes passed with fibre
August 15th 2023
South Africa’s biggest fibre telecommunications operator, Vumatel, now passes two million homes, a million of which are in traditionally underserved areas, including townships. Parent Maziv, which also owns Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), said it has also now deployed more than 50 000km of optic-fibre infrastructure. “We have rolled out coverage in areas such as Soweto, Khayelitsha and Umlazi. These are traditionally overlooked communities,” said Vumatel chief operating officer Dewald Booysen in a statement. Sister company DFA, meanwhile, has announced a R400-million fibre network infrastructure expansion project aimed at connecting more businesses in South Africa to high-speed broadband. “The project has been in trial phase since February and is now being rolled out at scale,” Maziv said. “The infrastructure upgrade, which will be carried out in three phases over 18 months, will ensure faster delivery of network services to customers and improved network performance, while providing a scalable solution to meet increasing demand for connectivity services from customers.” “DFA is investing heavily in enhancing and upgrading existing infrastructure environment to ensure we are able to deliver high volumes of fibre-to-the-business connectivity and provide customers with a consistently high standard of service delivery,” said chief technology officer Andreas Uys.