Five additional suburbs have endorsed Vumatel to join the growing list of Vumatel ‘fibrehoods’ in South Africa.
The suburbs include Emmarentia, where construction begins this month. Installation in Forest Town, Parktown, Gallo Manor and Melrose will occur in the first quarter of next year joining Northcliff, Sharonlea, Hyde Park and Olivedale as suburbs who will all experience the benefits of Vumatel FTTH in 2016.
“Gallo Manor issued a ‘technology neutral’ RFP in order to ensure that the best solution to the broadband problem in Gallo Manor was addressed. It was primarily broadband linked, however other services such as OTT TV/Video and the connection of our guardhouses and CCTV infrastructure were critical elements too,” says Brian Seligmann, Head of Gallo Manor FTTH Project.
Gallo Manor has to date provided one of the most stringent discovery processes encountered by Vumatel with regards to broadband connectivity within a suburb. In the case of Gallo Manor, the evaluation was based on a broad range of 13 criteria, including price, community involvement/commitment, connectivity for religious institutions and schools and technical solutions among others. “Vumatel was selected based on their having achieved the highest scores across all criteria, with a really strong showing on track record and reputation,” concludes Seligmann.
Currently, the Vuma network is live and services are available in Parkhurst, Parktown North, Greenside, Killarney, Riviera & Saxonwold and Parkwood. In addition, Vumatel is currently on site building ‘fibrehoods’ in Blairgowrie, Victory Park, Linden, Hurlingham, Glenadrienne, Willowild, Riepen Park, Bryanston and Emmarentia.
Vumatel recently announced the conclusion of a deal with Investec in which the South African and International Specialist Bank and Asset Manager acquired a minority stake in the business. The sizeable investment ensures that Vumatel is well positioned to accelerate its roll-out of FTTH to any community in South Africa that requests it.
“This is an extremely exciting period for the company, and we continue to focus on our commitment to deploy affordable, high speed FTTH to 100 000 homes by the end of 2016” concludes Schoeman.