So I have an update. It's probably not the one everyone wants to hear, but it's positive nonetheless.
The current trenching going on in J-Bay and surrounds is - after the municipality contacted me to confirm - for Vodacom's benefit. They're pulling in the fibre to link up new towers and upgrade their existing radios to support LTE/LTE-A and eventually 5G connectivity. I spoke to Yonke Networks weeks ago about this and it's not consumer-facing, not even when they're trenching across your driveway.
Telkom does have fibre in the area for Marina Martinique, and that will be tested and lit up probably before the end of the year. Telkom isn't doing an install for other estates, and don't have plans to roll out FTTH to the rest of the town even after the municipality asked them to look into the possibilty. Telkom is only interested in doing this if someone is paying them upfront, it seems, and the Marina Estate is more than capable of putting the cash in front of them.
It's a pity because Telkom still earns a lot of money from the local copper networks here and in Humansdorp. Once they move to fibre revenues will drop and the exchanges will not be as profitable. Greed is likely driving their decision making in the area, but I can understand it. Businesses aren't in the game to be altruistic.
More positively, the municipality has been in talks with Igen to install backhaul for their towers across the town, as well as install a fibre network for FTTH rollouts. No frametimes were given to me. I'm both happy at the prospect of this becoming an option, and uneasy about it at the same time. Herotel is sucking up a lot of smaller ISPs, and they may end up being the only fibre provider in J-Bay for some time to come (True Technologies isn't competing with them in terms of price, that's for sure). We'll have to see how things look next year.
For now, anyone wanting to have a high-speed, high-cap connection in J-Bay has the following options:
1) Telkom Fibre in Marina Martinique
2) Rain fixed LTE-A (limited to C-Place and CBD, and lower Wavecrest and Kabeljauws, and you're going to want an external antenna)
3) Vodacom fixed LTE-A or Wireless Premium
4) MTN LTE-A
TrueWan won't be any faster than 20Mbps and will definitely be more expensive than LTE-A, ADSL, and other WISP options. Igen won't do more than 8Mbps in the most ideal conditions with line of sight to an 8Mbps capable tower. Telkom is dead in the water thanks to copper and VDSL only being available under a certain distance to the Wavecrest exchange. Cell C doesn't even have their own equipment here.
Sucks.
