This month, an innovative approach to digging trenches for fibreoptic cable will herald the beginning of a new phase in a broadband revolution that began in 2015.
That was the year the South African connectivity market was shaken up by a small new entrant called Vumatel, which won a contract to lay down fibre in the affluent suburb of Parkhurst in Johannesburg. Barely a fortnight later, Telkom declared that it would begin its own fibre installations in 20 suburbs, including Parkhurst. It was a classic example of the old giant being woken from its slumber by a young upstart.
Now, a similar wake-up call is likely to happen. Much of the low-hanging fruit, that is affluent suburbs where most residents could afford expensive fibre contracts, has been snapped up by a wide range of players. The next frontier, namely lower-income suburbs, townships and rural areas, have been too expensive to wire up on a speculative basis by small players. As a result, it has left the big operators complacent about ignoring that market.
Ironically, it is not a hi-tech advance, but an engineering innovation, that is about to change the landscape. The biggest cost of fibre is not the cable itself, but the deep trenches that keep the fibre conduits secure. However, micro-trenching, which allows a thin channel rather than a deep trench to be cut into the ground, has now become viable. A fibre provider called Frogfoot, owned by Vox Telecom, is leading the charge.
"With traditional methods, you can trench between two and 20m a day if you're lucky," says Jacques du Toit, CEO of Vox. "With micro-trenching, you can do 150m a day. It's cleaner, it's faster, and it's cheaper."
Vox has identified 21,500 homes in Protea and Protea Glen in Soweto. That will make these the first township areas in Gauteng to get fibre, despite Vumatel announcing two years ago it was set to wire Alexandra. It has blamed the city of Joburg's delay in approving "wayleaves" - the right to lay cable on city-owned infrastructure. According to Du Toit, the Johannesburg Roads Agency has now approved Frogfoot's micro-trenching in Soweto.
Gladwin Marumo, technology manager at Mighty Comms, Vox's business partner on the project in Soweto, says his organisation decided to work with Vox "to ensure that connectivity is brought to all, and not just in the traditional suburbs, so that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from these technological advancements".
"The impact we expect to see in Soweto is massive. We are further complementing government programmes by bringing internet access to schools in the areas covered by the fibre project, ensuring that teachers and students can use technology to communicate and learn."
Du Toit says Vox is also working with the economic development department to uplift local internet cafes, which remain a significant resource for township residents, by providing them with additional income streams.
"It's amazing, once a house has fibre, how much more you can offer the residents, from CCTV and educational packages to Office 365 in the cloud, backup storage and Netflix," says Du Toit. "It's amazing how this one strand of fibre unlocks so much value."
• Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
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