A New Wave Of FTTH
As with any FTTH rollout, cost and installation time has always been the major requirements for deployments, however in recent years there has been a bigger focus on enabling low or non-skilled labour to deploy the distribution network and home drop.
One of the ways that the operators are de-risking themselves is by changing their model and making use of a fairly new trend in South Africa known as “build and transfer”, whereby third-party contractors provide a full turnkey rollout including gaining rights to build in areas etc and then selling the network off to operators once complete.
Although this model takes all the burden away from the operators, the fact that the contractors are being forced to use local labour affects the operators in terms of rollout speed and gaining homes passed in the shortest possible time.
There are some key challenges that the industry is facing in terms of rolling out FTTH, especially in the lower LSM areas, until recently there was little to no intervention from government in terms of safety and security and also at local council level with regards to wayleave and policy, the industry has been working hard on getting the government’s involvement which seems to bearing fruit now as government has pledged their support.
The new wave of FTTH has many great benefits for the country including bridging the digital divide and creating employment not only from a general sense but more importantly in the underserved areas where education is vital.
It is important for the operators to still have a handle on the rollout to some extent as they will eventually buy the network and own it and one of the ways they do this is with a predetermined specification which clearly states the expectations in terms of products used in the network.
It is key that the specification includes products that are designed with all these factors in mind such as rapid deployment, ease of use and cost effectiveness which will benefit both the contractors and ultimately the operator.
These factors are exactly what we at 7Twenty take into consideration when designing and manufacturing products, this is always the start of the brief and remains the major tick boxes throughout the process, we do this in various ways but one of the most effective in achieving this goal is collaborating with all stakeholders and we also go through a rigorous testing process with our clients to make sure the products are fit for purpose and functional before any moulds are produced for manufacturing.
Let’s build the future!
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