New date for big ADSL shutdown in South Africa

Openserve has postponed its planned termination of DSL and copper-based services in areas covered by its fibre network.

This is according to an email the company sent to ISPs on 13 August which was seen by MyBroadband.

Multiple ISPs have confirmed the legitimacy of the notice.

Openserve first informed ISPs in June 2020 that it would be shutting down DSL and copper-based services in areas where Openserve Fibre Connect (OFC) was already available.

This meant that all remaining ADSL and copper-based customers would have to switch to fibre or other types of broadband or be cut off from the Internet.

The switch-off was set to be actioned on 1 September, but it has now been delayed by a further three months to 1 December 2020.

ISPs raised concerns

Openserve’s original announcement raised concerns at ISPs like MWEB, who claimed the timing of the switch-off was problematic.

“MWEB is deeply concerned that Openserve is enforcing this change at this time, giving ISPs and customers only two months to change over and doing this during the COVID-19 national crisis, where social distancing is encouraged and customers are concerned about having installers in their homes,” MWEB said.

In its latest communication, Openserve thanked ISPs for their efforts in supporting its request for migrating their impacted customers to fibre.

It acknowledged concerns raised by the ISPs with regards to the short notice period and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To this end, we have taken a decision to announce a conditional extension to this initiative, to allow for as many users as possible to be migrated over to OFC before the DSL services are discontinued,” Openserve said.

Full details of extension

Openserve also provided the following details with regards to the extension:

• DSL users in the identified areas now have until 30 November 2020 to be migrated to OFC.
• Assurance incidents (fault requests) for the identified services will only be accepted up to and including 31 October 2020.
• It is therefore expected that faulty DSL services will be migrated to fibre when such faults are reported.
• Any remaining affected DSL services in the OFC footprint will be discontinued on 01 December 2020. Consideration will be given in cases where an OFC has been ordered but not installed yet.

The operator noted, however, that areas in which the significant majority of customers have already migrated to fibre will be prioritised for decommissioning and dates will be communicated on an ongoing basis.

“We request your support to prioritise and complete these migrations before the deadline to enable us to commence decommissioning of the copper systematically, thus easing the process and reducing uncertainty,” Openserve said.

It reiterated that all OFC installations for the affected DSL customers will be zero-rated.

“We wish to assure you of our intention to carry out our broadband network infrastructure upgrade with the least amount of disruption to your customers,” Openserve added.

Impacted areas

According to the communication Openserve previously sent to its customers, the following areas will be impacted by the Openserve announcement.

If you have an ADSL connection in one of these areas, you will need to migrate to a fibre Internet connection or you will be disconnected from 1 December 2020.

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