Broadband5.06.2014

Parkhurst fibre to the home: why Vumatel won

The Parkhurst Residents and Business Owners Association (PRABOA) recently announced that it has selected Vumatel as their preferred provider to supply fibre to the home in the area.

Vumatel beat many large telecoms companies, including MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, and Dark Fibre Africa.

It did not take Parkhurst long to select a winner, raising the question of what made Vumatel’s proposal stand out.

PRABOA’s Ryan Hawthorne explained that Vumatel had the best proposal, for the following reasons:

They had an option with a free line rental (none of the others did) – uptake is critical for the project and so this option was important;
An excellent technical proposal, which included detailed plans for the network;
Commercial terms that are very favourable to residents and businesses in Parkhurst, including products starting at line speeds of 4Mbps at no monthly line rental charge (and a R2,500 connection and installation fee) and offering line speeds of up to 1Gbps for R1,299 per month (and an installation fee of R1,500);
Internet can be purchased per gigabyte (GB) from a range of internet service providers (ISPs) for between approximately R2/GB and R3/GB. The open access nature of the proposal, which allows residents to buy internet from any ISP, counted strongly in Vumatel’s favour;
Vumatel provided a detailed business plan which showed that their proposal is financially viable, and the project was fully funded which means that residents do not need to raise capital for the project; and
The community relationship and compliance components of Vumatel’s proposal were also well developed. The proposal included a detailed plan for interacting and communicating with the community, including a shop where residents and businesses can interact with Vumatel representatives.

“We really want the fibre network to be in as soon as possible, so that we can install CCTV because residents are really worried about security in the area,” said Hawthorne.

“We have been waiting for real broadband for a really, really long time in Parkhurst – hence the speed with the decision-making.”