South African ISP Vumatel has announced that its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure now passes two million homes, of which one million are in traditionally underserved areas, including townships. Vumatel chief operating officer Dewald Booysen commented: ‘We have rolled out coverage in areas such as Soweto, Khayelitsha and Umlazi. These are traditionally overlooked communities. Vuma’s approach is also community-orientated and enables us to work with the community to overcome challenges that have traditionally hampered efforts.’
Vumatel is backed by MAZIV, which was created last year by Remgro-owned Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) after it merged Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) into a new infrastructure company. Vumatel’s network now consists of over 50,000km of fibre, while DFA’s spans 15,000km. Vumatel first launched FTTH technology in Parkhurst, Johannesburg back in 2014, becoming one of the country’s fibre pioneers.
According to data from MyBroadband.co.za, Vumatel now has the largest FTTH network in South Africa, eclipsing Telkom-backed Openserve (1.108 million homes passed), HeroTel (500,000), MetroFibre (460,000), Frogfoot (344,000) and Octotel (315,583).
Source: https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2023/08/16/vumatels-ftth-network-passes-two-million-homes/