MTN says FTTH ready ‘in a few weeks’

·3 Jun 2014

MTN South Africa says its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment is “progressing smoothly” with some residents expected to be connected within “a few weeks”.

The group had hoped to commercially launch a 100Mbps FTTH service in South Africa by 1 June 2014.

The operator first announced its intentions to launch the service in April, following successful FTTH trials conducted with residents of Monaghan Farm, a gated estate located 30km north of Johannesburg.

Robin Maduray, GM: Transmission Planning & Optimisation, MTN SA, told BusinessTech
that MTN’s transmission network has grown exponentially since 2009 with approximately 12,000km of lit fibre, in excess of 5,000 active microwave links and over 76% of its access site locations connected with MTN’s self-provided transmission network.

Maduray said that, to date, there are approximately 2,300 access sites connected with fibre.

“The final and most exciting part of this journey is to connect fibre to the home. MTN’s Fibre to the Home (FTTH) deployment is progressing smoothly and some residents will enjoy the benefits of high speed broadband connectivity in a few weeks,” the GM said.

MTN pointed out that its FTTH roll-out is demand-driven, adding that advanced discussions were underway with several other residential sites.

“MTN continues to explore various options to co-build, self-build, swap and leasing of fibre routes, with other operators and/or interested parties, to rapidly expand its fibre footprint to prevent duplication of fibre infrastructure.

“Furthermore, MTN have built strategic Microwave routes in rural areas to complement the fibre roll-out and are similarly investigating partnerships with other interested parties,” Maduray said.