Frogfoot boss warns Vodacom control over DFA would break South Africa's fibre industry

Daniel Puchert

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Fibre boss warns Vodacom control over DFA would break South Africa's fibre industry

Frogfoot founder and former CEO Abraham van der Merwe has told the Competition Tribunal that he is deeply concerned about what will happen if Vodacom buys a stake in Maziv.

Maziv is a Remgro-owned Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) subsidiary, which owns Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa (DFA).
God help us when Vodacom moves all the infrastructure to Huawei, TR-069 and locked devices.
Anyone who uses Vodacom hands them the keys to your security and opens you to risks.
 
I wasn't aware of that. What is the reason they are most affected when other FNOs seem fine? Does other FNOs use different backbones?
Many do use DFA as well for their backhauls such as Vuma but Froggy went into areas that had poorer infrastructure than Vuma and they also skimp on resilience and redundancy to save costs.
 
Many do use DFA as well for their backhauls such as Vuma but Froggy went into areas that had poorer infrastructure than Vuma and they also skimp on resilience and redundancy to save costs.
I also get the impression that sometime in the last 3 years, any new fibre infrastructure laid down by DFA, is of significantly lower quality that their initial network roll-out. They are likely "optimizing" costs as well.

Also, worth considering that Vumatel might be getting preferential pricing or support compared to other FNO's, due to them having the same owner.
 
I wasn't aware of that. What is the reason they are most affected when other FNOs seem fine? Does other FNOs use different backbones?
It only seems that way. A lot of FNO's are battling with DFA in the last 2 years or so.

The first to market FNO's that went into the most affluent areas do have an advantage, since those backhaul networks were built when DFA was doing much better work.
 
I also get the impression that sometime in the last 3 years, any new fibre infrastructure laid down by DFA, is of significantly lower quality that their initial network roll-out. They are likely "optimizing" costs as well.

Also, worth considering that Vumatel might be getting preferential pricing or support compared to other FNO's, due to them having the same owner.
3 years ago they fired some staff to make their financials look better. This triggered retribution and vandalism by the ones that had been shown the door.
 
I have a question: why don't most fiber network operators partner with Liquid Telecom for their infrastructure builds?
 
Then compete ffs. Part of the reason internet is so cheap in the US is because it's massively overbuilt. Putting all your eggs in one basket is neither good nor competitive.
 
Then compete ffs. Part of the reason internet is so cheap in the US is because it's massively overbuilt. Putting all your eggs in one basket is neither good nor competitive.
In the US specifically the government has incentivized those fibre builds. Many other countries as well.

Also the US is not massively overbuilt on fibre or else SpaceX would not have created Starlink.
 
In the US specifically the government has incentivized those fibre builds. Many other countries as well.

Also the US is not massively overbuilt on fibre or else SpaceX would not have created Starlink.
Many of those networks are left over from the dot com crash and were sold under bankruptcy. They are overbuilt as everyone and their dog at the time thought fibre would be this major investment. Starlink is not meant for the general population as Musk himself said but for areas that will never have internet under any circumstance and it's also not meant just for them.
 
Many of those networks are left over from the dot com crash and were sold under bankruptcy. They are overbuilt as everyone and their dog at the time thought fibre would be this major investment. Starlink is not meant for the general population as Musk himself said but for areas that will never have internet under any circumstance and it's also not meant just for them.
Yes, 11.4% is overbuilt and my tollie is also 11.4 inches.

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Yes, 11.4% is overbuilt and my tollie is also 11.4 inches.

View attachment 1713759
What you don't seem to understand is that it's 6 times the amount of people in 50 times the amount of land. Still it's very concentrated with a lot of desert, uninhabited land, or farms. Lots of people live in apartments 10 people on top of each other. You don't understand what overbuilt means. When the bubble hit everyone was trying to service those people not caring that 5 providers already laid their fibre in the same place because well, they were going to make their money back 1000x. When the bubble popped most went into bankruptcy just trying to sell off their assets to the highest bidder which wasn't very high at that point.
 
What you don't seem to understand is that it's 6 times the amount of people in 50 times the amount of land. Still it's very concentrated with a lot of desert, uninhabited land, or farms. Lots of people live in apartments 10 people on top of each other. You don't understand what overbuilt means. When the bubble hit everyone was trying to service those people not caring that 5 providers already laid their fibre in the same place because well, they were going to make their money back 1000x. When the bubble popped most went into bankruptcy just trying to sell off their assets to the highest bidder which wasn't very high at that point.
The federal government has allocated $97 Billon in funds as incentives to connect households not on fibre.
Why?
Because normal market conditions would not work.
The same is true for South Africa.
The same is true for Australia.

There is no money available in the public purse in South Africa for this because the cadres stole it all hence Vodacom cannot buy Vuma.
 
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