Vodacom fibre-to-the-home on its way

Vodacom says it is actively rolling out fibre in business parks, while the group is also preparing to do the same in gated communities.

“We’re currently building the fibre backbones to make this possible,” the group said, adding, however, that it was too early to give any concrete details at this stage.

In November, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub told Moneyweb that fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTx) are areas in which Vodacom is looking to invest.

“We have to invest more heavily into fibre to be able to carry the traffic and provide customers with the requisite speeds,” said Joosub.

“While we are doing this we may as well connect housing estates, densely populated areas and the businesses along the way.”

“So we see fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-business as a key strategy for us going forward,” the chief executive said.

Vodacom also aims to ramp up its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Gauteng in the coming financial year, with a 555 new sites in the province, up from 140 in the prior year.

The group said it is currently adding 22 LTE sites per day to its network, with 200 expected in April, alone.

Neville van Niekerk, Vodacom managing executive for Gauteng operations said that, in the new financial year, Vodacom aims to ramp up capex spend to R9 billion, from around R7 billion before.

He said that Vodacom’s data growth in Gauteng is up 77% on its network year over year, with voice up 13%.

The executive said that Vodacom will add 240 new 3G sites in Gauteng in the financial year 2014/15, down from 471 in the prior period which ends at the end of March.

This article was first published on BusinessTech

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