{"id":24091,"date":"2012-10-12T00:58:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T22:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=24091"},"modified":"2012-10-12T09:17:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T07:17:32","slug":"sa-economy-cannot-grow-on-1gb-dfa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/24091\/sa-economy-cannot-grow-on-1gb-dfa\/","title":{"rendered":"SA economy cannot grow on 1GB: DFA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA<\/a>) CEO, Gustav Smit<\/a> says that South Africa\u2019s economy will not grow with operators selling data packages as low as one and four gigabytes.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the MyBroadband 2012 conference in Midrand this week, Smit said that if somebody came to a customer\u2019s door selling such data packages he should be turned away. \u201cYou should chase that oke<\/em> away\u2026we will never get the economy growing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africans simply don\u2019t know what 20Mbps or 100Mbps to the home means. An opportunity needs to be created for users to test drive serious broadband, and ISPs need to play a leading role in mobilising communities,\u201d Smit said.<\/p>\n

The chief executive of DFA said that, between major fibre operators – including Broadband Infraco<\/a>, DFA, Neotel<\/a> and Telkom<\/a> – South Africa already has a substantial amount of fibre waiting to be adopted.<\/p>\n

He called on government to invest more in broadband in SA and highlighted the initiatives by the Australian government to invest significantly ($37.4billion) in a National Broadband Network\u00a0project to provide high-speed fibre optic cable broadband to 93% of homes, schools and businesses by 2021.<\/p>\n

DFA has already trenched more than 6,700 kilometres of optic fibre across South Africa, and Smit said that the company continues to trench more than 200 kilometres per month.<\/p>\n

Smit said the network is used by companies, such as cellular network operators Cell C<\/a>, Vodacom<\/a>, MTN<\/a>; landline network operator, Telkom; ISPs like IS<\/a> and MWeb<\/a>; media companies; and high Internet usage corporations.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore, we have 40 clients at this stage and this includes some government customers. For example, state-owned Broadband Infraco has its own links between cities but makes use of our network to link its customers within the metropolitan areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

DFA also leases optical fibre to large corporations, such as banks, where these companies have obtained their own telecommunications licences.<\/p>\n

The group does not actively sell its services outside of the telecommunications industry.
\nSmit said that, over the past five years, DFA has not had to build any fibre routes on a speculative basis and trenches have only been dug as customers have signed leases.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have a large order book and that will keep us busy. We are extending our reach into secondary cities and some of the smaller towns so that businesses in more remote communities have access to high speed data channels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be taking on some risk as we work to get fibre to every business and many homes, we anticipate 20% take-up over the next four years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Smit stressed that, on a corporate level, the company has no plans to list.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies usually list to raise capital to fund expansion, and while our expansion cannot be funded out of cash flows, our major shareholders – Remgro<\/a> and NewGX Capital – have deep pockets, and [they are] happy to continue making capital available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

DFA enters Mthatha with R10m kitty<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DFA underlines EBITDA status<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Dark Fibre Africa invests R72-million in Eastern Cape<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The A-to-tech of Remgro<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dark Fibre Africa targets 2,000km roll-out<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DFA says South Africa\u2019s economy will not grow with operators selling data packages as low as one and four gigabytes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1876,1756,1758,26,28,38,261,2591,65,27],"class_list":["post-24091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-broadband-infraco","tag-dark-fibre-africa","tag-gustav-smit","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-mweb","tag-neotel","tag-remgro","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24091","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24091"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24109,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24091\/revisions\/24109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}