Telkom South Africa is planning to deploy fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in upmarket suburbs in the cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town, TechCentral reports. Speaking at the company’s 2014 results presentation, CEO Sipho Maseko said that the telco hopes to offer maximum theoretical download speeds of up to 100Mbps by the end of March 2015.
The main focus will be on Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, namely Houghton Estate, Bryanston, Sandhurst, Westcliff, Rosebank, Craighall, Craighall Park, Illovo, Parktown North, Hyde Park and Parkhurst, although the company has outlined additional plans to deploy the FTTH service in Groenkloof, Brooklyn in Pretoria; Kloof (including Winston Park and Everton) and Reservoir Hills in Durban; and Foreshore, Bishopscourt, Camps Bay (including Clifton and Bakoven) and Plattekloof in Cape Town. Maseko said that third-party internet service providers (ISPs) will be granted access to Telkom’s FTTH network, and will be able to provide data services to customers in the same way they do over its copper-based ADSL network. The executive added: ‘This is not a Telkom retail-dedicated service… The ISPs are welcome to participate as well.’ The executive also revealed that the company had already deployed 475,000 active VDSL line ports and that 400,000 South African homes currently benefit from downlink speeds of 20Mbps-40Mbps.
Meanwhile, the telco has also revealed that it is looking to deploy 4G Long term Evolution (LTE) services to homes in eleven suburbs across the country. Maseko said in a statement: ‘This rollout is a precursor [to] many exciting prospects that Telkom is working towards. With speeds of 100Mbps on the fibre network and peak speeds of 100Mbps on the home LTE network, the concept of the ‘connected home’ becomes a lot more tangible and the possibility for value-added services [VAS] is within reach.’