Goodbye copper and bad Wi-Fi

Telkom’s wholesale fixed connectivity division, Openserve, plans to offer more speeds on its cutting-edge fibre-to-the-room (FTTR) service in the near future.

Openserve launched FTTR in South Africa in partnership with Huawei in 2023.

FTTR is a comprehensive fibre connectivity system that seeks to significantly improve home and business Internet experiences through a combination of fibre optic cable links and high-end connectivity access points.

It is ideally suited to premises with multiple users that require ultra-high speeds and ultra-low latency while using high-bandwidth applications like video streaming and online gaming.

Huawei launched FTTR and provided a demonstration of the technology at the Mobile World Congress 2022, which MyBroadband attended.

Most existing fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) or fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) solutions only use fibre optic cable up to the main fibre optical network terminal (ONT) in a house or office.

Typically, the ONT has an Ethernet/LAN port, which connects it to a Wi-Fi router to beam connectivity to users. Lower-cost installations sometimes use an ONT with integrated Wi-Fi.

In larger homes, users would sometimes extend the network with copper cables routed from the primary router or ONT to additional access points. Alternatively, they can use wireless Wi-Fi range extenders.

FTTR replaces the copper cabling with fibre optic cable, which extends to several additional edge ONTs with wireless capability strategically located across the premises to optimise speeds and coverage.

Huawei explained that the solution could achieve 1Gbps Wi-Fi speeds across the coverage area with up to 128 concurrent connections.

In addition, the system features intelligent network management capabilities, device connections achieve an imperceptible roaming latency of less than 20ms across a coverage area.

The home system can handle up to 16 Wi-Fi connections and 200 Internet-of-Things connections at a time.

The use of thin and translucent fibre optic cable also results in a much cleaner wired setup than copper cables.

Below are images from Huawei’s FTTR demo at MWC 2022, showing various parts of the solution.

More supported ISPs and speeds on the cards

FTTR is available to all of Openserve’s partner ISPs, but Platinum Broadband, Telesense, and Telkom SMB are the only ones currently offering the service.

Telkom’s version of the product is called Endless 1Gbps FTTR and consists of one gateway and up to four edge optical network terminals.

The product is limited to a 24-month contract for R2,899 per month, with a clawback penalty of R800 per remaining month in the event of early cancellation.

The upside of the contract structure is that the package comes with a service-level agreement that guarantees a maximum repair turnaround of eight hours.

Openserve said other ISPs were still building their retail value propositions for FTTR.

The company said current users have complimented the service for its stability, speed, and coverage throughout the home, as well as the ability to manage connections from a single location.

FTTR is the only product that allows Telkom and Openserve home users to get a 1Gbps fibre connection.

While South Africa’s other major fibre network operators (FNOs) offer FTTH products with 1Gbps download speeds at the top end, Openserve’s fastest FTTH download speed is 500Mbps.

Tekom’s retail division also does not sell any 1Gbps packages from third-party FNOs like Frogfoot, Metrofibre, or Vumatel, with the top speeds on these FNOs being 500Mbps for Telkom customers.

MyBroadband asked whether Telkom would also start supporting 1Gbps speeds on Openserve FTTH.

Instead, the company said it would do the inverse — offer FTTH speeds on its FTTR product instead.

A lower-speed FTTR product could appeal to those users who want a highly reliable connection with consistent performance in a large area but don’t necessarily need very high speeds or bandwidth.

The table below compares the publicly available prices of Openserve’s FTTR product with 1Gbps FTTH from other FNOs.

ISP/FNO	Technology	Download speed	Upload speed	Price
Platinum Broadband/Openserve	FTTR	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R2,999
Telkom/Openserve	FTTR	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R2,899
Afrihost/Vumatel	FTTH	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R2,347
Afrihost/Octotel	FTTH	1,000Mbps	200Mbps	R1,547
Afrihost/Vumatel	FTTH	1,000Mbps	250Mbps	R1,497
Afrihost/Frogfoot	FTTH	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R1,397
Afrihost/Metrofibre	FTTH	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R1,297
Afrihost/Zoom Fibre	FTTH	1,000Mbps	500Mbps	R1,277