{"id":564404,"date":"2024-10-10T18:29:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T16:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=564404"},"modified":"2024-10-10T18:33:45","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T16:33:45","slug":"truth-about-dfa-network-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/fibre\/564404-truth-about-dfa-network-problems.html","title":{"rendered":"Truth about DFA network problems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has spent over R450 million rearchitecting its network to address service delivery and performance problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was revealed by Remgro’s head of strategic investments, Pieter Uys, during the company’s recent annual financial results presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remgro owns an effective 57% stake in DFA’s parent company, Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH). CIVH also owns Vumatel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Last time I reported, we had to do a lot of work to get the DFA network world-class again,” Uys stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband first reported about the problems DFA experienced on its network<\/a> in early January 2023 after receiving numerous complaints from its customers about network instability and downtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large DFA customer told MyBroadband at the time that DFA’s fibre network used to be stable but deteriorated rapidly towards the end of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They said the network problems were so significant that DFA could not meet its service level agreements for numerous clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This forced DFA to halt installations until further notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another customer said his ISP informed him about big problems on the DFA network, adding that a DFA technician would visit them to investigate. The technician never arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The network issues became so severe that the DFA network operations centre started to respond to faults with a generic message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a November 2022 message to customers, DFA said it had seen a “variety of challenges which are adversely impacting our network performance in the Gauteng South Region.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, while its focus seemed to be on the Gauteng South region at the time, DFA customers in other areas also reported problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DFA also said at the time that it had implemented an emergency network rehabilitation programme to limit the increase in service interruptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After MyBroadband’s initial report, DFA disputed that it was experiencing widespread service problems<\/a> and said it was conducting upgrades to modernise and “future-proof” its network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said these upgrades included replacing older network components and preparing the Johannesburg network for improved delivery times on new links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Uys’ report paints a different picture of what happened during that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We stopped all new connections to the network,” he confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because the network was initially designed to service mostly telco customers and not thousands of connections a month, we could not effectively connect those customers without disrupting the network.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uys explained that the problems arose after DFA expanded its product portfolio to do business fibre in addition to providing dark fibre for telecommunications network operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The network didn’t keep up, and we had to freeze the rollout and rearchitect the network.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also confirmed that bringing down delivery times on new links was a factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Before we rearchitected the network, it sometimes took three months to connect a corporate customer from the date of order,” said Uys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With the new architecture, that has come down to 3 weeks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the year ended 31 March 2024, Remgro reported that DFA’s revenue grew 2.3% from R2.65 billion to R2.72 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Growth is slower than expected and less than we budgeted for,” Uys said, explaining that this was largely because DFA froze its network rollout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DFA’s costs also ballooned during the year, causing operating earnings to drop 19% from R1.33 billion to R1.08 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With the architecture, most of that work can only be done at night,” Uys explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is very dangerous to work in some of these areas where the work was done, so we had to step up the security.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uys said load-shedding also had some impact on the DFA’s operating costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Uys, most of the work to rearchitect the DFA network is completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said they have invested R450 million out of the R750 million that they budgeted to get the network world-class again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dark Fibre Africa’s biggest shareholder has explained what happened at the fibre network provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":564410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28470],"tags":[23945,81711,281],"class_list":["post-564404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fibre","tag-dark-fibre-africa-dfa","tag-maziv","tag-pieter-uys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564404"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564528,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564404\/revisions\/564528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}