According to MyBroadband.co.za, South African broadband provider Internet Solutions (IS) is currently trialling a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network solution, but has indicated that the costs involved are likely to prove prohibitive for a commercial offering. Speaking at regulator ICASA’s ongoing local loop unbundling (LLU) hearings, IS said that the cost of delivering individual FTTH connections to customers is so high that it will take ‘a very long time’ to recover the initial investment. IS said that the costly portion is not the fibre itself, but rather the trenching and legislation associated with implementing a FTTH rollout.
TeleGeography notes that the FTTH trial is not the first broadband initiative that IS has undertaken in recent months. In September IS confirmed that it was at an advanced stage of planning for a project that could see it build out a series of metropolitan Wi-Fi networks to serve business campuses and city streets in densely populated urban areas. IS plans to leverage the ZAR5 billion (USD612.2 million), 12,000km national fibre-optic network being built simultaneously by FibreCo, the broadband initiative that it has a 33.3% stake in; other joint partners include local mobile operator Cell C and Convergence Partners, the investment firm helmed by Dimension Data chairman Andile Ngcaba.