I can assure you that Europe, Asia and the US are better equipped/designed to be serviced by a fibre broadband connection, SA has so many issues with ducting, trenching and general access issues not to mention the vast open spaces. This drastically impacts the cost-to-serve.
Not in newer developments they don't .. that's all put in when they build the infrastructure. How are they better equipped overseas? DFA actually makes sure they route their backbones in the vicinity of these large developments.
Estates in SA (e.g. Midstream, Waterfall etc.) are far from highly concentrated high income areas, which is where you want to launch such services. Even the rich will not subsidise the lower income areas.
They're at least as densely populated as upmarket suburbs in other countries, and there are tons of extremely densely populated upmarket ones (just off the top of my head in KZN I can think of at least 5 high density prime candidates with DFA going past them).
The article is correct. It's the uncertainty which is holding this up - the money and business cases are there, but missing that one final piece.
Edit: You don't actually have to speculate about these things - look up the Vumatel tender for Parkhurst if you want real-world numbers that show this country is absolutely not special when it comes to rolling out this stuff.
