MTN fibre to the home – what happened?
MTN is refusing to comment on whether it went ahead with plans to commercially launch 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services in South Africa on Sunday, 1 June 2014.
The operator first announced its intentions to launch the service in April 2014, following successful FTTH trials conducted with residents of Monaghan Farm, a gated estate located 30km north of Johannesburg.
“MTN is currently rolling out aggressive deployment to high-density urban areas, such as high-end gated communities, boomed-off suburbs and high-rise buildings,” MTN said in its statement last month.
The operators said that advanced discussions were underway with several other residential sites.
However, despite numerous attempts to contact MTN, the operator remained silent on whether the service is ready to go live on the weekend.
MTN pointed out that its FTTH roll-out is demand-driven, and an extension of its already expanding fibre connectivity backbone, utilising Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, to business parks and residential estates in all major cities.
“We are massively excited by the momentum that our pre-launch has already created,” Eben Albertyn, chief technology officer of MTN SA, said in April.
According to MTN, the estimated connectivity date for homes in the Monaghan Farm estate is mid-May 2014, with in excess of 60% of the residents having signed up. Offers vary based on desired Internet speed, ranging from 10 to 100 Mbps.
The operator did not provide an update on this development, despite questions being sent to the firm.
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