The man who brought Internet access to millions of South Africans

Remgro executive and former Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys is behind many of South Africa’s biggest broadband developments, bringing Internet access to millions of people.

Uys grew up in the Western Cape, attended Laerskool Hermanus, and did his secondary schooling in Sutherland, Petrusville, and Durbanville.

He studied at the University of Stellenbosch where he completed Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in engineering.

After his studies, Uys worked at Telkom in Alan Knott-Craig’s data communications team in the 1980s, before the advent of mobile networks.

Knott-Craig said Uys was the best engineer he had ever met. He said Uys came up with solutions in record time and built innovative products that changed the market.

When Telkom decided to launch a mobile operator in the early nineties and put Knott-Craig in charge, Uys was one of the first employees to join him.

Uys moved to Vodacom in 1993 and was a founder member of the mobile operator’s engineering management team. 

He transferred to the radio systems and planning division in 1995, where he played a major role in the first phase of the planning and rollout of Vodacom’s GSM network.

At the time, the Vodacom mobile network rollout in South Africa was the fastest in the world, which showed Uys’s engineering prowess.

He helped make Vodacom the largest mobile operator in South Africa, a lead the company still holds today.

Uys was also responsible for the successful launch of the Vodacom Internet Company, which quickly became a leading Internet service provider.

This was the start of a thirty-year journey in which Uys was a key figure in bringing Internet access to millions of South Africans.

Pieter Uys quickly rose through the ranks at Vodacom and held numerous executive positions, including managing director of Vodacom South Africa.

He was appointed Chief Operating Officer of the Vodacom Group in April 2004 and chairman of Vodacom South Africa in 2005.

During this time, he accomplished something his competitors said was impossible: launching 3G broadband access by Christmas 2004.

3G was a new technology then, and former MTN CTO Karel Pienaar said he would “eat his hat” if Vodacom launched a commercially viable solution by the end of 2004.

Under Uys’ leadership, Vodacom surprised the market by launching its first 3G offerings in December 2004, well before its competitors.

At the time, Telkom’s ADSL service was the dominant broadband product in South Africa. It offered users 3GB of data per month for around R1,000.

Vodacom’s 3G offering was competitively priced, providing South Africans an alternative to ADSL. It shook up the broadband market and fuelled competition.

In October 2008, Uys took over from Knott-Craig as Vodacom’s chief executive. Under his leadership, Vodacom continued to dominate mobile broadband access in South Africa.

Vodacom and MTN were in a race to be first with technologies like HSDPA, HSPA+, and 4G, and Uys ensured they won.

In his last year as Vodacom CEO, the mobile operator added millions of new data users, bringing the total number of data customers in South Africa to 12.2 million.

Uys also focussed on getting smartphones into people’s hands in South Africa to give them access to the Internet.

In the year before Uys stepped down as Vodacom CEO, the number of smartphones on Vodacom’s network grew an incredible 55%.

Even more interestingly, these 5.1 million smartphones used an average of 92 megabytes (MB) a month, compared to only 38MB the year before.

He fuelled the smartphone revolution in South Africa, which gave people access to resources they never had before.

At the end of March 2013, Uys handed the reins to Shameel Joosub, the incoming Vodacom chief executive.

During his twenty-year tenure at Vodacom, Uys played a key role in driving the company’s broadband network rollout and getting South Africans connected.

Uys joined the management team of the investment holding company Remgro on 1 April 2013, where he continued his work furthering broadband access in South Africa.

At the time, Remgro’s technology interests included an investment in SEACOM and Dark Fibre Africa (DFA).

Under Uys’ guidance, Remgro acquired a majority stake in Vumatel through Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH).

Vumatel is South Africa’s largest fibre-to-the-home provider and pioneered open-access networks.

Over the last decade, Vumatel built a fibre network spanning over 50,000 km and passed more than 2 million homes.

Uys, in partnership with Vumatel CEO Dietlof Mare, expanded the operator’s presence to low-income areas.

Through their Vuma Core, Vuma Reach, and Vuma Key products, they aim to bring affordable fibre access to all households in South Africa.

In September 2024, Vumatel launched its first commercial Vuma Key products in Alexandra and Kayamandi, offering unlimited fibre internet for R99 per month.

Another big development under Uys’ watch was when CIVH acquired a large stake in Herotel through Vumatel in 2022. This formed part of CIVH’s drive to connect all households to fibre.

Herotel is a fixed wireless Internet service provider and a growing player in South Africa’s fibre-to-the-home industry, focussing on secondary cities and small towns.

With the support of CIVH and Vumatel as shareholders, Herotel has connected 338,000 fibre stands in townships and 245,000 stands in traditional suburbs.

CIVH is also working on a deal that would see Vodacom acquire a 30% stake in Maziv, Vumatel and DFA’s holding company.

This deal would accelerate fibre rollout throughout South Africa, especially in underserved and underprivileged areas.

The transaction is currently at the Competition Tribunal, and a ruling regarding the acquisition is expected within the next few weeks.

There is a common thread in many of South Africa’s biggest developments in the broadband and Internet industries: Pieter Uys.

Whether mobile broadband, smartphone access, or fibre networks, Uys played a core role in ensuring millions of South Africans got connected.