CIVH dead silent on Sigfox South Africa

Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) has been quiet about Sigfox South Africa and its Internet of Things (IoT) network since the company’s biggest customers bought stakes in the company in 2022.

Sigfox SA launched as SqwidNet in 2016. It operates an ultra-narrowband IoT network based on Sigfox technology.

It offered low-cost access to Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and operators in the country. SqwidNet was initially launched as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dark Fibre Africa, which is now part of Maziv.

However, the company struggled to generate sufficient revenue and was considering shuttering its operations.

To save the network, SqwidNet’s major customers raised funds to buy stakes in the newly formed Sigfox South Africa.

Maziv’s parent company, Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH), remained invested in the network, and it was joined by Discovery Insure, Fidelity ADT, Macrocomm, and Buffet Investments.

Most of the Sigfox South Africa website was offline at the time of publication. A look at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows that the website was working correctly on 30 April 2024.

Following publication, Sigfox SA CEO Gregory Rood confirmed the website experienced downtime due to a technical error.

“That has now been resolved and the website is fully restored. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to those who attempted to access our website during that time,” Rood said.

“We can confirm that customers were in no way impacted by the website downtime. Our operational and business support systems remained fully functional, and our network continued to operate without disruption.”

SqwidNet’s battle to generate sufficient revenue before the Sigfox takeover was due to slower than anticipated uptake of IoT technology in South Africa, compounded by several other factors.

These included the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns, and generally low economic growth.

The company started retrenching staff in June 2021 to keep the network online while it sought a solution.

It said those impacted by the retrenchment would be absorbed into the group’s other companies where possible.

According to a press release from May 2020, then-SqwidNet said its network covered 90% of the South African population and 90% of the country’s national roads at the time.

It said the nationwide coverage allows millions of sensors and devices to connect to its IoT network.

Neither SqwidNet nor Sigfox have provided an update on these figures since. However, its global coverage map shows it still plans to roll out its network to offer better coverage across South Africa.

The map below shows areas with coverage in blue, while those to which Sigfox still plans to expand its network are shown in purple.

MyBroadband asked CIVH for an update on Sigfox SA, but the company did not comment.