Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) announced its strategic agreements with several partners, including HeroTel and Comsol, to significantly enhance connectivity coverage and strengthen its product offering to customers.
Praveen Govender, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer (CSMO) for DFA, stated, “This marks a first for DFA and is a notable step towards what we envision as the future of SA telecoms. Considering the less-than-optimal penetration of fiber and significant overbuild by fiber network operators, we want to ensure we stay aligned with our vision of connecting all of South Africa to high-speed, high-volume broadband. However, the industry faces severe capital expenditure (CapEx) constraints, with investors exercising caution amid load shedding and global uncertainty affecting long-term investment decisions.
DFA signed a transformative agreement with HeroTel, one of South Africa’s premier fiber network operators. While DFA already boasts substantial fiber coverage in major metros, HeroTel’s network spans smaller metros, covering over 400 towns. This opens new opportunities for DFA’s customers to sell business connectivity in conjunction with their business solutions and services.
Additionally, DFA signed an agreement with Comsol to offer operator redundancy in multiple locations. This means that, where feasible, DFA can offer alternate technologies such as microwaves as temporary solutions while awaiting fiber or as redundancy, ensuring services have reliable uptime.
Praveen emphasized the crucial role partnerships will play in the telecoms landscape of tomorrow. “Firms need to remain agile and OPEX light to capitalize on opportunities quickly. Partnering makes sense – and ultimately – the customer benefits from having the best service from experienced industry players, backed by a brand that they trust.”
He also highlighted that working through partners improves the delivery time to the end customer.
“We aim to keep the mean time to install (MTTI) as short as possible, ensuring businesses get up and running quickly. Connectivity is a vital catalyst to successfully building up our economy – since we know that every 10% of increased connectivity penetration results in 0.8% GDP growth.
“DFA is committed to providing our customers with quality managed services, and this expanded coverage is a significant step towards our ultimate mission of having 100% coverage for fixed business connectivity throughout South Africa,” Govender added, noting that their decision to partner was driven by their mission to enable expansion and success for their customers.