According to Remgro’s latest investor presentation<\/a><\/strong>, this is the biggest income bracket in South Africa, with around 9.7 million homes that Vumatel could connect.<\/p>\n When Vumatel first launched, it targeted only high-income households through its Core networks. It estimates there are around 2.2 million households in this bracket.<\/p>\n This meant it was missing out on approximately 14.5 million lower-income homes \u2014 9.7 million earning less than R5,000, and 4.8 million earning R5,000 to R30,000 per month.<\/p>\n During the presentation, Vumatel CEO Dietlof Mare explained the opportunity the fibre network operator (FNO) has to expand its network in the country and close South Africa’s connectivity gap.<\/p>\n “The opportunity for us is twofold. We are sitting with a super unpenetrated market at this point. We’ve got 17.6 million homes. We’ve got very bad copper infrastructure that can’t create this gap close,” Mare stated.<\/p>\n “And we’re sitting there in the middle of this with the biggest access network, and the biggest network that can connect homes.”<\/p>\n He said that as of the FNO’s launch, it only targeted approximately 2.2 million homes in high-living standards measure (LSM) areas like Parkhurst and Sandton with its Core networks, which potentially limited its expansion.<\/p>\n “We focussed only on the high LSMs because we could never in our minds get a solution to roll this out to the lower LSMs,” he said.<\/p>\n Vumatel CEO Dietlof Mare<\/p><\/div>\n “You had unofficial forums working there. You had gangsters closing the businesses now and then. So it was just for us not possible.”<\/p>\n In addition to the issues of unofficial forums and gang influences in lower-LSM areas, Vumatel was also concerned about getting payment from people who use its services.<\/p>\n “Then we sat down and decided one day, why don’t we launch a prepaid model into the fibre-to-the-home model,” Mare said.<\/p>\n Vumatel began trialling its Vuma Reach product<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 aimed at the estimated 4.8 million households earning R5,000 to R30,000 monthly \u2014 in Mitchell’s Plain in 2019 on a prepaid basis.<\/p>\n “We were one of the first companies in the world to do fibre-to-the-home on a prepaid model,” Mare stated.<\/p>\n He explained that this addressed the debt collection concerns it had relating to providing connectivity in lower LSM areas and offered a lower price point to those wanting to sign up.<\/p>\n Mare added the FNO’s Vuma Reach product had been successful and that the trick regarding such rollouts was getting the community to buy in like it did in Mitchell’s Plain.<\/p>\n “We created a community purpose base in line with the values of the group, and we created this in those communities where the people became the promoters of the product,” he said.<\/p>\n “The people actually then started building the networks.”<\/p>\n “In the beginning, we could, at maximum, build [connect] 70,000 homes a year. Now we’re building [connecting] 60,000-70,000 homes a month,” he added.<\/p>\n Vumatel’s CEO Dietlof Mare explained the network operator’s three FTTH business models during a presentation to Remgro investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":405169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28470],"tags":[4462,35,21387,79066,79064,63307,25299],"class_list":["post-451288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fibre","tag-dietlof-mare","tag-headline","tag-remgro","tag-vuma-core","tag-vuma-key","tag-vuma-reach","tag-vumatel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451472,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451288\/revisions\/451472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dietlof](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Dietlof-Mare.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nNow read: Good news for fibre connections during Eskom’s Stage 6 power cuts<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"