Fibre internet in Gauteng on Openserve (Telkom) network

[jcheek]

If you're anything like me, by now you're probably sick of hearing about how wonderfully FTTH is working in a few select suburbs in Johannesburg. It seemed that 2014 was filled with multiple reports of the same fibre rollouts in the same few suburbs - Parkhurst, Monaghan Park etc.

If you live in Gauteng, you've probably also been watching the announcements about Telkom's FTTH rollout with keen interest, especially since the official start of the rollout announced in December 2014.

A few days ago, I noticed that a Telkom FTTH coverage checker and Telkom FTTH sales literature have gone up on the Telkom website.

As of today (21 January 2015), the Telkom fibre coverage map for my city (Pretoria) only shows actual and planned FTTH/FTTB availability in Eldo Glen, Groenkloof, Brooklyn and a tiny piece in Monument Park :



My own suburb (Faerie Glen) is way east of Brooklyn and is not shown as having any coverage.

But wait!

A few weeks ago, I noticed contractors digging up the pavements in my area, laying the tell-tale green plastic sleeves and red "sub-ducts", and starting to pull fibre-optic cables through:



Then yesterday, a team arrived in our block and started to fix overhead fibre-optic cables onto the same infrastructure that carries the old copper voice/DSL lines.

So, despite what the Telkom FTTH coverage map says (or rather, doesn't say), it seems that Telkom's greater FTTH rollout has started in earnest and may be coming to my suburb .

To anyone living in the areas already served (or about to be served) by Telkom's FTTH, please share photos and your experiences of the service so far. Hopefully this thread will chronicle the rollout of Telkom/Openserve FTTH in Gauteng, and document early user experiences as the take-up occurs.

I should mention that the intention is for this thread to cover all fibre offerings being delivered over Telkom/Openserve FTTH infrastructure. So far that includes products from : Telkom, MWeb, Web Africa, Vox Telecom and RSAWeb.

The following are hyperlinks to some useful posts within this thread and other web resources :



FTTH package summaries and comment in this thread:

• Comparison of "Home" FTTH packages from 4 providers
• Telkom FTTH package summary and comment
• MWeb FTTH package summary
• WebAfrica FTTH package summary and comment
• Vox Telecom FTTH package summary and comment
• RSAWeb Telkom-based FTTH package summary and comment
• ISPAfrika Telkom-based FTTH package summary

Home pages for Telkom-based FTTH product offerings from various ISPs:

• Telkom FTTH coverage checker and Telkom FTTH packages
• MWeb FTTH coverage checker and packages
• WebAfrica FTTH coverage checker and packages
• Vox Telecom FTTH coverage checker and packages
• RSAWeb Home FTTH coverage checker and packages

Tips and guidelines in this and related threads :

• Excellent "ordering blog" and FTTH installation tips (ducted installation) by biena
• Nice journal of a Telkom-based FTTH connection ordered through WebAfrica by Overkill69
• My own installation blog (Telkom line, ISP service and installation by WebAfrica)

To kick things off, the Home FTTH packages available from Telkom itself are currently as follows:

10Mbps / 50GB soft cap for R699/month over 24 months
20Mbps / 50GB cap for R849/month over 24 months
40Mbps / 100GB cap for R1099/month over 24 months
100Mbps / 100GB cap for R1599/month over 24 months

All deals typically include a suitable endpoint device (a fibre-to-ethernet "modem", officially called the ONT - Optical Network Terminal) and some kind of Wi-Fi router.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

R1000 for 50Gb, hahahahaha are they fcking high?

 

[jcheek]

Progress on the ground

Here are some pics of the Telkom FTTH infrastructure that is being installed in Faerie Glen, Pretoria at the moment:


The last pole of the last mile ... awaiting installation of termination equipment


Close-up of the "Telkom / M-TEC" fibre-optic cable


Fibre-optic cable (looped) piggybacked onto the old multi-pair copper cable


Spare F/O cable looped over the old copper termination box. (Amazing that that mess of old wiring could actually carry signal at 2Mbps!)

A chat with one of the workmen confirms that they're laying the cable on behalf of Telkom.

The F/O cable they're using appears to be supplied by M-TEC (Malesela Taihan Electric Cable (Pty) Ltd), a South African company with links to the Taihan Electric Wire Company (TEC). It seems that the cable itself is manufactured by Taihan in Korea and imported by M-TEC.

 

[Johnatan56]

Compared to xDSL services, it's expensive, yes. But then for most users, xDSL - especially uncapped ADSL - doesn't perform at anything like these (claimed) speeds. The vast majority of xDSL users are probably paying well under R10/GB on average, but very rarely getting anything more than 4Mbps due to distance from the exchange and poor-quality copper lines.

By contrast, users on high-speed wireless services (like Telkom's LTE, or private WISPs) are easily achieving speeds well over 50Mbps on capped packages. The going rate for wireless access of that type is around R25 - R40 / GB. Case in point : Telkom's prepaid LTE deal is R1800 for 60GB (with another 60GB of midnight data) for a nett price of R30/GB.

So R1000 for R50GB (R20/GB) is perhaps not that crazy for a launch deal ....

Then you have the problem that people don't sign up at launch. You forgot the installation cost as well.

 

[Inertia]

My area has technicians most days sitting in a bakkie with fibre streaming in from manholes doing who knows what. I'm still waiting for other ISPs to release their offers over Telkom's fibre. I don't know how long I'll be waiting for

 

[jcheek]

R1000 for 50Gb, hahahahaha are they fcking high?

Compared to xDSL services, it's expensive, yes. But then for most users, xDSL - especially uncapped ADSL - doesn't perform at anything like these (claimed) speeds. The vast majority of xDSL users are probably paying well under R10/GB on average, but very rarely getting anything more than 4Mbps due to distance from the exchange and poor-quality copper lines.

By contrast, users on high-speed wireless services (like Telkom's LTE, or private WISPs) are easily achieving speeds well over 50Mbps on capped packages. The going rate for wireless access of that type is around R25 - R40 / GB. Case in point : Telkom's prepaid LTE deal is R1800 for 60GB (with another 60GB of midnight data) for a nett price of R30/GB.

So R1000 for R50GB (R20/GB) is perhaps not that crazy for a launch deal ....

Then you have the problem that people don't sign up at launch. You forgot the installation cost as well.

There's no installation cost mentioned. I would guess that the cost of the terminal equipment is amortised into the monthly fee over the compulsory 24-month period. Do you have other information ?

 

[jcheek]

WebAfrica have announced pricing for their FTTH service that will run on top of Telkom's infrastructure.

Unlike Telkom, who have amortised the equipment and setup fees into the monthly rentals, WebAfrica have chosen to separate those components from the monthly "data" service fee :



Both companies are still only offering the service on a compulsory 2-year contract.

So apart from the R1 749 setup fee, WebAfrica's monthly fee for 40GB of data delivered at 20Mbps is R788 per month (effectively R19.70/GB). This compares to Telkom's R999/50GB (R19.98/GB).

Looking at the 20Mbps service over the same 2-year contract period, a WebAfrica client will pay R20 661 (all inclusive) for a maximum of 960GB of data (R21.52/GB); whereas a Telkom FTTH user will pay a total of R23 976 for a maximum of 1200GB of data (R19.98/GB).

So there's about a 7.7% premium in terms of R/GB for the additional flexibility that WebAfrica offers.

Edit: WebAfrica have subsequently doubled the night-time data allowance from a 1+2 scheme to a 1+4 scheme. So, if you buy 90GB of data, you get an extra 360GB of data to use between 00:00 and 06:00. See this post for more details.

 

[jcheek]

Telkom FTTH install progress - Faerie Glen

Some more pics of the Telkom FTTH install happening in Faerie Glen, Pretoria.

The installers are using the characteristic corrugated green outer sleeves (they look to be about 110mm diameter) as a conduit where cables need to be laid underground. Inside the outer sleeve goes a 32mm continuous, waterproof High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) "sub-duct" - the red tubing visible in the pics below:






Although the 32mm red sub-duct is branded "Telkom Optirod", it is actually a product called "Optex" made by Dura-Line / Nextube.




The red HDPE sub-duct has a low-friction polyethylene lining pre-lubricated with silicone oil. This allows the actual fibre-optic cable to be easily pulled through later.




You can see the actual M-TEC fibre-optic cable (the small-diameter black cable) emerging from the sub-duct in the picture below :






How NOT to pull an optic-fibre cable through ducting - look at the twist on the cable already!
This is the downside of having to do a route "piecemeal".

This kind of direct burial is typically happening on the street pavements. Between the streets (ie along the boundary between two back-to-back stands), the same M-TEC fibre-optic cable is being piggybacked on the existing overhead voice/DSL copper lines as seen in Post #1.

Hmmm .... not much provision for drainage on that concrete floor, is there ?

 

[jcheek]

More FTTH progress on the ground

Street reticulation work is progressing in the Faerie Glen area.

One thing I notice is that the initial deployment seems to be very selective. Rather than bringing fibre to every house in every street, it appears that the installers are targeting only specific houses or blocks. My guess is that they might be targeting existing xDSL clients, following those circuits and piggybacking the fibre backbone off those same distribution arrangements.

Some more pics:


The usual mayhem where streets get dug up (yet again) to take a conduit across from one side to the other.



Even though there's no copper in there, most of the inspection pits get anti-theft manhole covers.



The red HDPE sub-duct emerging from the ground ...



... to go up onto the aerial distribution system.



Oops! Collateral damage.
That's a guaranteed power cable fault a few years down the line

 

[jcheek]

Close-up of Telkom's FTTH fibre cable

Some close-up pics of the actual fibre-optic cable that Telkom is using (from M-TEC (Malesela Taihan Electric Cable (Pty) Ltd), a South African company with links to the Taihan Electric Wire Company (TEC)).



The cable itself looks pretty unassuming from the outside.
Note the "O-48" marking on the outer sheath : this seems to indicate the number of individual fibres inside.



The black outer sheath contains a fairly stiff central steel filament coated with white plastic, presumably to give the cable some tensile strength. Around that there is space for four colour-coded plastic carrier tubes, each around 2.5mm in diameter. Not all tubes are used in all cables : in some cables (as in this one), some of the inner tubes are replaced by solid (yellow) plastic filler wires. The active tubes (red and green ones in this pic) are hollow and contain the actual fibres. There are 6 individual fibres in each carrier tube here, each colour-coded. The sheath on this cable was marked "O-12", seeming to indicate the 2 x 6 fibres it contains.



The individual (jacketed) fibres are just 0.22mm in diameter.
They look amazingly insignificant in light (haha!) of what they can do!

 

[Inertia]

Nice updates jcheek! Did you cut off a bit of that fibre for personal inspection?

 

[jcheek]

Nice updates jcheek! Did you cut off a bit of that fibre for personal inspection?

Thanks Inertia!
No, there are plenty of offcuts lying around (honest!)

 

[eddief1]

View attachment 188503
... to go up onto the aerial distribution system.

That's weird...that red HDPE ducting is NOT UV stabilized !!! U can't run it up a pole like that! Hope they seal the open end also, going to have the entire duct fill with water.

Also that twist in the fibre...they don't seem to know how to fleet (Lay the cable out in a figure 8 so you can blow both directions)

Oh gosh...Is this Telkom using inexperienced installers ?

 

[jcheek]

That's weird...that red HDPE ducting is NOT UV stabilized !!! U can't run it up a pole like that! Hope they seal the open end also, going to have the entire duct fill with water.

Also that twist in the fibre...they don't seem to know how to fleet (Lay the cable out in a figure 8 so you can blow both directions)

Oh gosh...Is this Telkom using inexperienced installers ?

Yeah, I had (have) the same concerns!
The Nextube sub-duct is UV stabilised to permit outdoor storage for up to a year, but it's not rated for permanent outdoor exposure. I guess the only thing that might save that particular one in the pic is the fact that it's in partial shade.

Those open ends are a worry, yes. From personal experience I know what a surprising amount of water can enter an open vertical tube exposed to rain, especially when it's attached to a vertical surface like a pole.
I also don't see any evidence of drainage arrangements in those inspection pits - just a solid concrete floor and sidewalls - the perfect water trap ...
Granted the fibre cable itself is less prone to water than copper cables (at least initially), but it seems that despite a few decades of experience at maintaining underground cables, Telkom is re-creating the same sorts of problems for itself ...

All in all this is a fairly low-tech deployment being done largely by hand. I certainly haven't seen any fancy fleeting machines and even blowing machines seem to be quite scarce on the ground.

 

[eddief1]

Yeah, I had (have) the same concerns!
The Nextube sub-duct is UV stabilised to permit outdoor storage for up to a year, but it's not rated for permanent outdoor exposure. I guess the only thing that might save that particular one in the pic is the fact that it's in partial shade.

Those open ends are a worry, yes. From personal experience I know what a surprising amount of water can enter an open vertical tube exposed to rain, especially when it's attached to a vertical surface like a pole.
I also don't see any evidence of drainage arrangements in those inspection pits - just a solid concrete floor and sidewalls - the perfect water trap ...
Granted the fibre cable itself is less prone to water than copper cables (at least initially), but it seems that despite a few decades of experience at maintaining underground cables, Telkom is re-creating the same sorts of problems for itself ...

All in all this is a fairly low-tech deployment being done largely by hand. I certainly haven't seen any fancy fleeting machines and even blowing machines seem to be quite scarce on the ground.

Oh well...when you live in Africa I guess you can expect this kind of thing. I just hope and pray that they train their FTTH technicians better than the current ones...with everything moving over to IP things get tricky and at the moment they can't even join a piece of copper properly

 

[jcheek]

Update : Faerie Glen FTTH rollout

So Telkom's contractors have started doing some of the splicing/termination work on the 48-fibre lines on the aerial part of the FTTH network in Faerie Glen :

Before - 48-fibre line coiled loosely over poletops:



After - 48-fibre line joined up using a splicing box strapped to the pole :



At this pole, it looks to me like they've spliced a line coming up from the underground part of the network onto the overhead fibre line. You can see the metal conduit where the line comes up the pole:



The splicing box seems to be one of Furukawa's range of splicing cabinets :

It looks somewhat similar to their model J427, but more robust, adapted for pole-mounting, and presumably able to handle up to 48 fibres. It might also include provision to separate some of the fibres onto smaller cables that serve each of the clients ?

The Furukawa equipment looks identical to that used during Telkom's FTTH trials carried out in the Loevenstein (Cape Town) area last year, as captured in RH360's post here.

 

[jcheek]

Aha! Seems the Telkom FTTH coverage map has been updated within the last few days :



Faerie Glen now shows as "planned"
At least the "planning" now matches the rollout already happening.

Although there's a lot of activity on the ground, the actual level of completion differs markedly from street to street. In some places the overhead lines are already in position and terminated, whereas in others there are still open pits in the ground. I suspect there's still quite a lot to do, so it's hard to know how long it'll be before they actually light up these circuits - weeks, or maybe months ?

 

[dualmeister]

Aha! Seems the Telkom FTTH coverage map has been updated within the last few days

I'm officially on map now.

 

[ebendl]

Aha! Seems the Telkom FTTH coverage map has been updated within the last few days :

View attachment 189923

Faerie Glen now shows as "planned"
At least the "planning" now matches the rollout already happening.

Mmm, I'm looking at it but I don't see Faerie Glen as planned?

 

[slvR]

Until they include the phone line and increase upload, doubt many sensible people will hop on the fibre hype