The Parkview Residents\u2019 Association (PRA) says that it has selected Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) as its partner to deliver\u00a0fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in Parkview and Greenside East, in north Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
This agreement will see the rollout of fibre delivering internet connections of up to 1Gbps to residents and businesses in the area, PRA said.<\/p>\n
DFA has committed to immediately begin the planning of the network and to complete the task within four months, it said.<\/p>\n
The PRA together with DFA will be enabling a number of internet service providers to offer their services to the residents and these include Vodacom, Vox Telecom, XDSL, Cybersmart and MWEB.<\/p>\n
“DFA is charging ISPs less than Telkom does to access the network. This means that residents will get much better services at costs starting lower than current equivalent ADSL prices,” PRA said.<\/p>\n
“10Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mpbs services will be available catering for the widest range of household needs. We expect entry level prices to be less than R600 including data for much better quality and speed than is available on ADSL,” the residents association said.<\/p>\n
DFA said it will not increase its charges to the ISPs for five years, while the infrastructure provider has committed to entering into a service level agreement with the PRA that guarantees 99.95% uptime and repair time, in the case of a fault, of 8 hours or less.<\/p>\n
The PRA said it will work with Gauteng\u2019s provincial broadband network project to connect all the public schools in the area to the fibre network.<\/p>\n
The residents body said it selected DFA following Request for Proposals, to which the likes of Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and Vumatel all responded.<\/p>\n
“After a shortlisting and interview process we selected DFA based on the quality of their solution, their experience, their financial backing and their pricing,” it said.<\/p>\n
“For less than R1,000 per month you could have a very fast 50Mbps line with a phone, cheaper phone calls, 100GB internet cap per month \u2013 enough for a lot of movies \u2013 and all with 1GB of mobile data included.”<\/p>\n
“We are engaging ISPs who want to offer services on the network and will be able to tell you their prices very soon,” it said.<\/p>\n
DFA is expected to apply for the various permissions required over the next few weeks and will begin construction in January.<\/p>\n
The duration of the works is set for around 8-10 weeks, with the expected services available from April 2015.<\/p>\n
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