CENTURION, Gauteng – 28 February 2012 – In cooperation with George Municipality, Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) is currently deploying a fibre infrastructure to the value of R15 million. This project will not only launch the city into the digital age, but it will also bring significant investment into the area.
Not only does DFA employ local labourers and contractors, but as part of its business strategy, most of the project materials and consumables are purchased from local businesses.
DFA has evolved into the largest open access fibre infrastructure provider in Southern Africa with an expenditure plan in excess of R3.5 billion countrywide. Other nearby cities that will benefit from this rollout include Knysna, East London and Mthatha with an investment value in excess of R80-million.
George Municipality officials are confident that the new fibre infrastructure will be influential in attracting investment to the city. DFA has developed a sustainable business model whereby local labour is used to maintain the network.
The socio economic benefits of fibre optic networks are vast, affordable broadband contributes to increased economic activity. Expansion of communications infrastructure brings about new business opportunities that are dependent on broadband like ISPs, Internet Cafes and banking services.
Open access broadband also stimulates competition within the telecommunications market, ultimately reducing Internet costs. Furthermore, the competitive advantage and productivity gains of broadband are enormous. Municipalities are able to provide electronic services, education levels improve with access to information and communities have access to eHealth and eLearning.
Dark Fibre Africa CEO Gustav Smit says they merely provide the open fibre infrastructure. “This enables licensed operators like Vodacom, MTN and Cell C to give communities access to the network, it is now up to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to get fibre Internet connections to the homes.
Smit has called on ISPs to play a leading role in mobilising communities. “End users simply don’t know what 20Mbps or 100Mbps to the home means. An opportunity needs to be created for users to test drive serious broadband.
“DFA is here to provide a long term sustainable solution to the local community,” he concludes.
DFA is the premier wholesale, open-access fibre-infrastructure and -connectivity provider in South Africa. We finance, build, install, manage, and maintain a world-class fibre network to transmit metro and long-haul telecommunications traffic. We started rolling out our fibre network in 2007, and to date, we have deployed over 13,000 km of ducting infrastructure in major metros, secondary cities, and smaller towns. Our network runs with an industry-leading uptime of 99.98%. We lease our secure transmission and backbone fibre infrastructure and provide associated connectivity services to telecommunications operators, Internet service providers, media conglomerates, tertiary education institutions, municipalities, government organizations, and other businesses, large and small, on equal terms. DFA is a Level 3 B-BBEE Contributor on the ICT Sector Codes.
Press contacts
Tribeca PR for DFA
dfa@tribecapr.co.za