Dark Fibre to meet bandwidth needs in smaller cities
TELECOMS infrastructure company Dark Fibre Africa will spend R1,2bn this year in laying a fibre network in secondary cities such as Rustenburg, Potchefstroom, George and Polokwane to meet the demand for bandwidth in those areas.
Dark Fibre lays fibreoptic cables that it monitors and maintains, then sells capacity to operators to enable them to provide broadband to their customers. Its open access model stimulates competition in the telecommunications market and has eliminated duplications in some areas, but most importantly it has helped companies that cannot afford to build their own infrastructure to have access to its high speed network.
Dark Fibre’s cables have enough capacity to accommodate all the network operators.
CEO Gustav Smit said yesterday the company’s demand for bandwidth was increasing rapidly as more customers required high speed network connection, mainly for data services. He said Dark Fibre’s model allowed companies easier access to the network at much greater speeds.
Mr Smit said the socioeconomic benefits of fibreoptic networks included affordable broadband, which contributes to increased economic activity.
“The demand for bandwidth is growing everywhere. Expansion of communications infrastructure in any city brings about new business opportunities that are dependent on broadband,” he said.
The company has been concentrating on metropolitan areas where there is a high chance of selling capacity to operators struggling with bandwidth congestion.
It has laid fibre in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town and has spent R3,2bn over the past four years. “Our footprint extends nationally and links with the Seacom and the Eassy cables at Mthunzini in KwaZulu-Natal and links to the WACS cable at Yzerfontein and the SAT 3 cable at Melkbosstrand in the Western Cape,” Mr Smit said.
The company has 37 customers including MTN, Vodacom and Cell C, and internet service providers.
Dark Fibre expects to make a net profit in six to seven years. The company has positive earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
Mr Smit said the business was capital intensive, hence many internet service providers would not have been able to build their own infrastructure.
Mr Smit expects the demand for bandwidth to soar as more people connect to the internet using their smartphones.
According to a report last month from global technology firm Cisco, mobile data traffic in 2016 will be equivalent to 17 times the volume of the entire South African internet in 2005. There will be 134-million networked devices in 2016, up from 83-million in 2011. The average broadband speed will grow 2,6-fold from 2011 to 2016, from two megabits per second (Mbps) to five Mbps, Cisco predicted.