Remgro-owned Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has spent close to R1bn on its network over the past 18 months to increase its footprint and address customer complaints about network instability.
DFA said it had invested more than R800m to upgrade its national fibre network. “This investment strengthens DFA’s position as a premium wholesale open-access connectivity provider in SA and addresses the growing demand for reliable, high-speed internet,” the company in a statement.
The fibre operator has a national network that provides connectivity and backhaul for mobile operators, data centres, internet service providers and public sector institutions.
In telecommunications, backhaul is the physical infrastructure that connects a network’s core to its smaller networks or local networks.
The unit is part of Remgro’s Maziv, a company that also houses fellow infrastructure provider Vumatel, SADV, Rise Telecoms, BritelinkMCT and Herotel.
The most recent investment comes after DFA’s dry underground distribution cabinet (DUDC) network enhancement project launched in August 2023 at a cost of R400m, which focused on stabilising and upgrading its network infrastructure.
The cabinets house cabling and other networking equipment underground.
The investment has already delivered measurable results, including a 40% improvement in new circuit delivery times and a 100% improvement in mean time to repair (MTTR) where the new architecture is operational, DFA said.
“We have improved the average number of new circuits delivered from 800 to 1,500 a month. In one month, we delivered nearly 2,000 new connections — a record for us. We’re also enabling higher line speeds and increasing available capacity to meet the changing needs of our customers,” said Maziv chief technology officer Andreas Uys.
“With the new architecture supported by a recently consolidated PMO office, we are very focused on reducing delivery times while driving high-quality service. Our target this year is to deliver up to 2,500 connections per month,” he said.
“We could potentially deliver fibre connectivity to buildings already on our network within 14 days, and to non-connected buildings within 55 days. These upgrades and changes in our PMO are critical to meeting the increasing demand for fast, stable internet services.”
Maziv is flush with cash, having secured a R25bn loan led by Standard Bank for a fibre expansion initiative in late 2023. Standard Bank, which is bullish about the sector, had previously backed MetroFibre Networx’s R5bn fibreoptic expansion through a similar arrangement.
DFA is gearing up for further capital expenditure after a proposed merger with Vodacom’s fibre business, though the deal is in the balance after it was rejected by the Competition Tribunal in October.
The proposed merger would have seen Vodacom take a 30% stake in Maziv, together worth an estimated R13bn — with the option of increasing the stake to 40%.
Maziv is hoping its new investment will calm concerns about its network stability and slower service delivery, having faced customer complaints in 2022.
“Our network upgrades have vastly improved resilience and diversity in the network,” said Maziv COO Dewald Booysen. “We still maintained a national uptime of over 99.5%, even during high-incident periods. Currently, we’re performing at an exceptional 99.99% uptime.”
CORRECTION: January 31 2025
An earlier version of this article said Dark Fibre Africa had spent R1.2bn on its network investment. This is in fact R800m. In its press release, the company gave the impression that it had spent R400m in 2023 and R800m in 2024 on its network investment. The company has come back to clarify that the R800m is a total of spend in both years.
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