South African open access fibre broadband infrastructure provider Vumatel (Vuma) has bought a 45% non-controlling stake in fibre/fixed wireless access (FWA) ISP HeroTel for an undisclosed sum, reports Bizcommunity. Vumatel CEO Dietlof Mare announced: ‘HeroTel will benefit from this deal by immediately being able to continue its plans for the deployment of fibre connectivity solutions in South Africa’s secondary cities and towns – effectively allowing more people throughout the country to access unlimited high speed internet. Most importantly, this investment has the future potential to unlock even greater opportunities for both Vuma and HeroTel to access, connect and uplift more communities in the future, connect even more schools to unlimited fibre connectivity, and empower lives throughout the country.’ Mare added that Vuma will continue building, owning, and operating high speed fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks using its wholesale open access model. Vuma says it has so far passed just under 1.5 million homes and deployed over 31,000 kilometres of fibre infrastructure across the country.
TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database shows that HeroTel currently operates in more than 400 towns and 107 municipalities, across all nine South African provinces, and has over 100,000 broadband subscriptions, with around two-thirds on fibre packages and the remainder via FWA. The ISP’s new part-owner Vumatel is itself controlled by South African telecoms infrastructure holding company CIVH, which also owns Dark Fibre Africa.