Hurlingham, Glenadrienne, Hyde Park, Northcliff, Sharonlea and Olivedale have joined a growing list of suburbs to get fibre-to-the-home.
According to Giorgio Iovino, Sales Director at Vumatel, they are currently installing in Saxonwold, Parkwood, Riviera and Killarney. The installations in Victory Park, Linden, Bryanston South and Blairgowrie are scheduled to begin in October. “With these new suburbs we will have provided services to over 30,000 homes by February next year,” says Iovino.
Richard Shuttle, Chair of the Central Sharonlea Residents Forum (CSRF) notes that the introduction of FTTH is set to change the residents’ daily electronic interactions considerably, add value to their everyday lives and vastly improve security surveillance capabilities. “We are entering exciting times with the introduction of FTTH. The CSRF along with its immediate neighbours are proud to be the pioneers of this new initiative being introduced by Vumatel in the Randburg area,” says Shuttle.
“The support from communities has been fantastic,“ says Niel Schoeman, CEO of Vumatel. “We are currently making our infrastructure available to approximately 2000 additional homes a month and still ramping up delivery thereof. We are in discussions with new suburbs every day. Based on demand we will need to make services available to a further 100,000 homes next year. This demand has resulted in us making a decision to release new areas on our portal so residents can show their support”
For residents in the newly announced areas that have not yet expressed their interest, Vumatel has given them an option to show their support at www.vumatel.co.za. Once enough interest has been gathered from residents in the new suburbs, Vumatel will commit to roll out fibre in 2016.
New ISP joins the network
XDSL has also announced that they will join Vumatel’s open access network. “XDSL is excited to be part of this early period in the deployment of FTTH in SA. We are pleased to announce our exciting range of FTTH product offerings across the Vumatel network and are confident that the end consumer will appreciate these new offerings as being superior to broadband offerings provided over legacy infrastructure,” says Marius Olivier Commercial Head at XDSL.
