Broadband Infraco extends fibre to northern provinces

State-owned enterprise Broadband Infraco plans to roll out fibre-optic network infrastructure in the northern provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, TechCentral cites the company’s CEO Puleng Kwele as saying. The executive said that the network will have an initial design capacity of 40Gbps and will extend from Gauteng to Polokwane via Soekmekaar and Tzaneen towards Hoedspruit and then to Nelspruit. It then runs from Nelspruit via Ngodwana, Belfast and Witbank back to Pretoria. A spur link from Polokwane to Broadband Infraco’s international gateway to Zimbabwe in Beitbridge also forms part of the ‘northern ring capacity upgrade project’, which will be rolled out in two phases. The first, involving the upgrade of the spur link to Beitbridge, is expected to be completed by the end of June, while the second phase – involving the upgrade of the remaining sites – is scheduled for completion by the end of August. The project forms part of Infraco’s ZAR700 million (USD74.2 million) investment plan for this financial year, which will also see the deployment of 29 points of presence in KwaZulu-Natal province.