Greencom vs 123NET vs InfinityFibre

T

tsavvy

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2015
Messages
244
Reaction score
31
Location
Johannesburg
Hello, I want to know which company will roll out the fastest to our city (Rustenburg) and how many sign-ups they need.

Thanks
 
Even though 123Net will probably ask for the lowest sign up numbers, I suspect Greencom will be faster if you approach them directly.

Just have a look at what happened in Secunda
 
The best way to get fibre to your area is to run an open RFP (request for proposal) process. Create a website (I suggest rustenburgfibre.co.za, you can copy any and all information form the lynnwood Fibre website). Create a facebook page and run a facebook add in your area to get some likes. Create a survey for people to complete (you can again copy the LFI survey) but keep it simple. Focus on email addresses, a yes I want fibre question, and their location. Lastly (and most important and time consuming) interface with your community. Get an article in your local newspaper, ask the ward councillors to e-mail everyone on their ward distribution list (they will be hesitant, but it works if you can explain the idea and benefits to them to them, that you are a private individual wanting to improve your area, and if you can show some existing survey results i.e. 50 people completed the survey so far and 49 said yes!). Also try the other community organizations, community security, residents associations, etc. Anything with an existing communication network in your area. You can also try and distribute flyers but this is expensive, and you need someone with a marketing degree to help you out here. Another idea that I have not tried is to get a group of people, print them all t-shirts with the rustenburg fibre logo, and go door to door asking for signups (either on paper with a shortened version of the questionnaire or on-line via a tablet that you carry). Rmember e-mails, a yes or no to I want fibre question, and an address. Brute force but effective.

We managed to get 7 proposals within 2 months this way. Now Frogfoot will connect more than 22k homes in the east of Pretoria / Tshwane in the next 18 months.

Best of luck!
 
Last edited:
tsavvy said:
Hello, I want to know which company will roll out the fastest to our city (Rustenburg) and how many sign-ups they need.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Greencom are a reseller of Metro Fibre Networx, InfinityFibre are a ISP only and do not install fibre, 123.net are an operator. and seem to have lots of threads going on this forum, but are only seem to be deploying in the Durban area.

The other major issue for locations such as Rustenburg, is not the actual cost of the access deployment, (its more or less the same for every suburb, its the cost of getting to a DATA centre such as Teraco for Interconnect to ISP's or one of the international bandwidth carriers.
 
Last edited:
Alkine said:
The best way to get fibre to your area is to run an open RFP (request for proposal) process. Create a website (I suggest rustenburgfibre.co.za, you can copy any and all information form the lynnwood Fibre website). Create a facebook page and run a facebook add in your area to get some likes. Create a survey for people to complete (you can again copy the LFI survey) but keep it simple. Focus on email addresses, a yes I want fibre question, and their location. Lastly (and most important and time consuming) interface with your community. Get an article in your local newspaper, ask the ward councillors to e-mail everyone on their ward distribution list (they will be hesitant, but it works if you can explain the idea and benefits to them to them, that you are a private individual wanting to improve your area, and if you can show some existing survey results i.e. 50 people completed the survey so far and 49 said yes!). Also try the other community organizations, community security, residents associations, etc. Anything with an existing communication network in your area. You can also try and distribute flyers but this is expensive, and you need someone with a marketing degree to help you out here. Another idea that I have not tried is to get a group of people, print them all t-shirts with the rustenburg fibre logo, and go door to door asking for signups (either on paper with a shortened version of the questionnaire or on-line via a tablet that you carry). Rmember e-mails, a yes or no to I want fibre question, and an address. Brute force but effective.

We managed to get 7 proposals within 2 months this way. Now Frogfoot will connect more than 22k homes in the east of Pretoria / Tshwane in the next 18 months.

Best of luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks Alkine.

I will defiantely set up a website because I have been learning web design and development for quite a while now. Also FB pages. I am just shy/scared to go out to the community and tell them. They are "behind on technology" and won't know what I'm talking about
 
tsavvy said:
Thanks Alkine.

I will defiantely set up a website because I have been learning web design and development for quite a while now. Also FB pages. I am just shy/scared to go out to the community and tell them. They are "behind on technology" and won't know what I'm talking about
Click to expand...

I had this issue as well, but if you compare it to what they are currently using and why it is better (ADSL vs Fibre, 3G vs Fibre, LTE vs Fibre) then they understand and support it. Don't worry about being shy, I'm also shy but this is good experience to have and with each interaction (as you have more and more) you will come to realize there is nothing to be shy about.

On the website, I would recommend you spend as little time on the design, and most time on the content. You do not want to get into the situation where maintaining the website takes up all the time that you could have spent on spreading the message. I personally used squarespace to host our website, it was easy to use and straight forward and it allowed me to focus on the things that will move the project forward.
 
The community is actually responding very well... I don't think I will need a website, I can update the facebook page regularly for info. I will get flyers out in this vacation!
 
tsavvy said:
The community is actually responding very well... I don't think I will need a website, I can update the facebook page regularly for info. I will get flyers out in this vacation!
Click to expand...

Here is the website that was done for Lynnwood: http://www.lynnwoodfibre.com/
A lot of useful information on there. Maybe ask the site owner if you can use it as a template?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X