Fibre22.01.2025

Uncapped 100Mbps fibre for R5 per day in South Africa

Fibertime — formerly Project Isizwe, the company behind the Kayamandi Fibre Project — has been quiet about its progress last year and its plans for 2025.

Former iBurst and Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig (junior) launched Fibertime, then Iziswe, in November 2022 to provide affordable uncapped fibre to South African townships.

Customers pay roughly R5 per day by using a specially created stablecoin called VulaCoin to access the service.

The service includes free installation and a router, providing customers with a 100Mbps uncapped fibre connection.

MyBroadband asked Fibertime for updated figures on its fibre rollouts and about its plans for this year, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.

In May 2024, the Internet service provider (ISP) told MyBroadband that it connected 9,100 homes to its networks in South African townships.

These were split between Kayamandi, with 7,800 homes connected, and townships in Gqeberha, contributing a further 1,300 homes.

VulaCoin CEO Steve Briggs said Fibertime saw average traffic figures of around 1.8GB per connected user in a 24-hour session in December 2023.

The number of homes connected had grown from 891 in May of the year before. However, there was some confusion over this figure as the company had reported 4,500 homes connected in December 2022.

This is due to a major model shift after Fibertime encountered issues with Wi-Fi signal distribution due to the materials used to build many shacks.

When it launched, Briggs said Fibertime used two types of connection models in the Kayamandi township.

“The brick structures have a fibre drop and a network termination unit. The tin structures receive their Wi-Fi through a pole-mounted outdoor, fibre-connected, Wi-Fi access point,” he explained.

The Wi-Fi hotspot plan to supply multiple homes at reduced costs didn’t work because the metal shakes severely attenuated Wi-Fi signals.

To address the issue, Fibertime started connecting fibre directly to homes to avoid connection interruptions.

VulaCoin CEO Steve Briggs

In December 2022, Briggs told MyBroadband they had been piloting Showmax vouchers to make it more affordable for users to access streaming services.

“We’ve done some interesting pilots. One of them is with Showmax,” said Briggs.

“Showmax is working with us on a bundle solution, where our users in Kayamandi can benefit from a Showmax pass.”

“We hope over the next few weeks to continue working with them and others to sell vouchers through our VulaCoin wallet, effectively making post-paid-type products like that more palatable to the prepaid market,” he added.

In May 2024, Briggs said the Showmax vouchers it offered on trial were very successful and that he hoped they would be added to the VulaCoin digital marketplace.

“Streaming videos are one of the most popular Internet applications our customers use,” he said.

“Having said this, our customers constantly reference the abundance of free streaming options (both music and video) that their newfound digital access enables them to experience.”

The company’s ultimate goal is to connect 180 million homes in Africa and serve one billion customers with uncapped pay-as-you-go fibre-to-the-home Internet.

At R5 per day for 100Mbps, Fibertime wants to offer a broadband service that is much more affordable than mobile data, and it plans to do so with a sustainable business model.

In December 2023, Briggs told MyBroadband that the company is consistently seeing revenue of more than R7.50 per connected home per day for connections older than six months.

Fibertime generates a maximum of R15.42 of revenue per home per day, with an average of R6.92 per connected home per day.

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