SEACOM<\/a>, who says that fast-changing user behaviour is putting pressure on telecom operators to evolve their business models.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s thanks to competition from innovative start-ups and small operators that the larger players have had to step up their game in fibre, Ramdhani says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about the cloud and Internet TV for years but didn\u2019t have the infrastructure to support the concepts,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s finally coming to fruition because new competitors have forced content, application and infrastructure providers to speed up the deployment of new offerings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was Conduct\u2019s (now part of Dark Fibre Africa) entry into the Fibre to the Business (FTTB) market and Vumatel\u2019s entry into the suburban Fibre to the Home (FTTH) market that galvanised South Africa\u2019s incumbent operators into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, there\u2019s a flurry of activity in the fibre market and the way in which businesses and consumers use the Internet has changed completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
As higher bandwidth speeds on copper and wireless became more affordable, businesses and consumers began dabbling with cloud apps and video streaming.<\/p>\n
Yet, the user experience wasn\u2019t ideal and many users become willing as a result to pay a premium for faster, more reliable connectivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmong businesses, fibre is all about offsite backup, offsite data storage and other Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings that unleash the true power of the cloud.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the home, fibre is all about multiple people watching Internet TV streams on different screens,\u201d Ramdhani says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese applications have created a business case for widespread fibre rollouts across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, combined with the fact that technological innovations have driven the cost of fibre deployments down, means that operators are more willing to take a moderate risk by providing end-users with the experience they desire.<\/p>\n
And the risk has paid off.<\/p>\n
Consumers are now clamouring for new services and the fibre that delivers the best experience. It seems that every time you turn around, yet another operator has emerged to serve this booming market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the competition that is emerging, operators will need to shift their focus to a lean, customer-oriented business operating model to remain relevant in this market.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news is that fibre will become more and more profitable for them as scale grows,\u201d says Ramdhani.<\/p>\n
A fortunate side effect is that the more fibre is put into the ground, the cheaper it becomes to deploy fibre infrastructure to neighbouring communities, says Ramdhani.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may be hard to imagine now, but in the near future you can expect fibre deployments to surge in areas outside the main metros of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe capital costs of deployment are falling and the barriers to entry have been removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be economically viable to deploy fibre even in areas where the average telecom revenue per user is considered low in today\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a few years, everyone will be able to use their Internet connection indulgently \u2013 video calls, media streaming, and real-time backups will become second nature not just for businesses but for residential users as well,\u201d Ramdhani adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s telecoms industry is on the cusp of its next wave of growth, thanks to the growing uptake of bandwidth intensive applications such as Cloud services and Internet TV streaming from businesses and consumers alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":118198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[1622,26,39],"class_list":["post-118194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-fibre","tag-headline","tag-seacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118200,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118194\/revisions\/118200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}