Silly mistakes cause major fibre problems in South Africa

South Africa’s Internet service providers (ISPs) are encountering many issues with fibre network operators (FNOs) and misbehaving customers that are delaying activations for users at new addresses.

While FNOs provide the infrastructure for fibre-to-the-home connectivity (FTTH), ISPs are the industry’s consumer-facing side.

They must arrange installations and activations, and handle general communications with the customer. As a result, they often come under fire from customers for failures or other issues that are not within their control.

One MyBroadband reader recently experienced a long delay at an address that already had an FTTH access point due to several such issues.

Firstly, his chosen ISP was unable to link the address he provided with one that had FTTH coverage, despite a line already being dropped into his new house.

The ISP cancelled the order without notifying the customer. Only after following up a few days later did he learn there was an issue with the address.

After rectifying this and confirming the address had FTTH coverage, another problem emerged — the optical network terminal (ONT) was missing.

While the ISP could see that an installation had previously been done at the address, the ONT was showing as offline.

The ONT converts light signals into electrical signals and vice versa, enabling data transfer between a customer’s router or other connected device via an Ethernet (“LAN”) cable.

The ONT is typically in a small rectangular or square box against the wall, which can be fixed to the wall.

Most ONTs are linked to a specific address and will not work at a new location. In some cases, the ONT may also have built-in Wi-Fi connectivity.

Some FNOs also put stickers on the box to emphasise that it remains their property and should not be moved from the premises, but this is not foolproof either.

However, these factors have not been enough to stop some customers who think they need the ONT to use their fibre at a new address from taking it along.

Lack of awareness causing major headaches

After several more messages back and forth, the ISP booked an FNO technician to install new customer-premise equipment at the site.

These hassles meant the line took about 10 days to go live from being ordered.

If the ISP could detect his address and the previous resident had not taken the ONT, the reader could have had his FTTH connection active as soon as he plugged in his Afrihost router.

MyBroadband asked major FTTH ISPs whether the removal of ONTs remained a big headache and what other problems frequently led to line activation delays.

According to Axxess co-founder and spokesperson Franco Barbalich, the removal of ONTs by previous residents continues to be a major issue.

Other issues were primarily due to FNO failures, including not listing premises on their end despite fibre being available in that location, which was the same issue that troubled the MyBroadband reader.

Another issue was the de-provisioning of ONTs by FNOs after contractors installed them, requiring proof of address for activation.

“Deprovisioning will delay the activation as the FNO will request proof of address to confirm that the client resides at the premises where the fibre activation is requested,” Barbalich said.

Barbalich added it would help greatly if FNOs and their contractors could call new customers at least an hour or two before visiting the premises to install or provide updates on delays.

“Currently, the lack of advance notice is causing frustration for clients and leading to missed appointments or delayed activations,” he said.

Another reputable ISP who preferred to remain anonymous said that ONTs being taken by people moving out was not a big problem.

However, moving customers frequently took along ONT power cables, leaving new customers with a similar problem.

“This requires a full call-out fee, and the ISPs are mostly billed for that to replace a power cable to the ONT,” the ISP said.

In other instances, the ONT cannot be activated remotely, requiring a call-out from an FNO technician, causing a simple activation to take a few days, whereas it could have been done in a few hours.

Mismatches in serial numbers and addresses cause delays where the FNO needs to go to the site to fix this, causing delays in activation.

Lastly, FNOs sometimes do not clear addresses for new activations after another customer has moved out.

The ISP explained that new customers must then provide proof of address to the ISP for the FNO to process manually, which can take a couple of days.