Shootout at the fibre corral

While there's an almost disappointing dearth of hairy people on horses shooting wildly at other hairy people, the fibre landgrab is not without its troubles and challenges.

"Fibre is capital-intensive and requires sufficient demand to reach a price point that is palatable to the market," says Reshaad Sha, chief strategy officer, Dark Fibre Africa. "Economies-of-scale benefits that are required to reach these accessible market price points are achieved in areas that have a high concentration of, and propensity to, adopt. Market readiness in terms of this is driven by factors such as disposable income, availability of relevant content and smart device penetration."

The rollout of fibre will be prioritised on these principles and this is, obviously, seeing it dominate in the urban environment. More rural areas remain wireless, with 4G, 3G and LTE granting sporadic access to the online realm. However, they are not being ignored and abandoned as initiatives such as SA Connect have been established as part of the government's plan to deliver 100% national broadband access by 2030.

"SA Connect has several broad objectives, and the FTTH overall play does contribute to a few of these objectives," says Sha. "The private sector is playing a key role in achieving some of these goals, without their work being labelled as SA Connect. FTTH cannot be looked at in isolation to FTTB either, as routes designed to bring the business online are taken into consideration for the home access routes. FTTH also supports the smart city agenda and the efficient delivery of e-government and e-citizen services that are outlined in the SA Connect policy."

SA Connect is a lofty goal, but it's an expensive one. In a recent interview with Finance24, Seacom's chief data officer Suveer Ramdhani said that the price tag attached to replacing the copper cables with fibre would be around R60 billion and this cost would fall to the Telkoms, Vumatels and DFAs of the world. This statistic is borne out by the fact that Dark Fibre Africa and SA Digital Villages (SADV), in which the organisation has now taken a significant minority stake, are rolling out infrastructure that is predominantly new. Most areas don't have any usable infrastructure that can be repurposed for a fibre deployment, and in the cases where the infrastructure is already in place, it is exclusively owned by other telecom operators.

"It becomes a fairly lengthy process," says Sha. "The home user applies for a fibre-based broadband service and value-added service from their ISP of choice. The ISP then purchases the FTTH access from a provider, such as SADV, and adds the broadband value-added services to create a full offering that is then delivered to the customer and managed by the ISP. Consumers will always subscribe to the services provided by an ISP, although home owner associations can deal directly with a network provider to bring infrastructure connectivity and accessibility to their area."

For the South African market, connectivity is still complex, frustrating and expensive. In 2015, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations, local broadband connectivity was ten times more expensive than the UK. And five times slower. Fibre has the potential to change this, but rollout is costly and takes time to initiate. Will South Africa get connected? It is likely that those in urban environments will be enjoying the speed and proficiency of fibre over the next few years, but the rural and the remote will remain behind. A distant disconnect that may have a lot longer to wait.

The sad tale of the forlorn fibre-free suburb - the road without bunting, without annoying flags and heavy, delayed traffic. The area where hands holding laptops are still raised to the sky in a desperate attempt to gain some, any, kind of signal to open a web page or read their e-mail. These are the lost folk. Those who stare at the road next door and listen to the screeches of internet glee and who are, for some random reason, ignored.

"Operators are being accused of cherry-picking, however, many communities have well-structured Home Owner Associations (HOA that drive FTTH initiatives," says Juanita Clark, CEO, FTTH Council South Africa. "Some even write their own tenders and adjudicate these and in other areas, they identify potential FTTH partners and invite them to do interviews. The HOAs also lobby their communities to ensure a certain percent uptake to make their areas more viable."

Naturally, this is a very attractive side-effect for the telecoms operator as there is more certainty on a return on investment. The sweet-spot is around 40% commitment and the HOAs do a lot of the initial legwork. These efforts can be a win-win for both community and operator and some communities are setting up HAOs to start lobbying their communities for FTTH.

"Areas that are interested in FTTH can register on our website, and this information is then shared with operators," says Clark. "This is, of course, very different to the issues that currently surround FTTB - fibre to the business. Here, there's another battle taking place."

The answer to the question as to why your business is still waiting for fibre has nothing to do with availability and everything to do with politics. According to the FTTH Council Africa, it is property developers, landlords and their agents who are blocking or restricting telecommunications service provider access to properties.

Some of these individuals, particularly those who operate and manage Business Parks, are not inclined to pay attention to the obligations and expectations of the Electronic Communications Act. They happily block, restrict or prevent unfettered access to properties under their control. This then stops the Icasa-licensed service providers from fulfilling their role in bringing communications services to end-users.

The Telecoms and Service Provider Industry has already had its fair share of battles with local government and is likely to be just as committed to taking on the war with the private sector. It is licensed to provide services and, by Jove, that's what it's going to do. It looks likely that the industry is going to focus on being as reasonable and as ethical as possible so that end-users can sob with fibre-inspired relief, and that they are equally open to respecting the needs of landlords in terms of return on investment. However, it's probably not going to tolerate anti-competitive behaviour or unreasonable demands.

Home is where the productivity is...

• Frogfoot Networks is deploying fibre to more than 90 000 households (MS)
• 57% of US organisations have formal policies for remote working
• 45% rate their peers as supporting of remote working arrangements
• 77% of organisations say the company provides access to technology support for working remotely
• 60% of employees find it gives them a work/life balance
• 55% find it saves fuel
• 45% find home working more productive
• FTTH Council Africa has a team across Africa and the world
• 92% of millennials want to work remotely (oDesk)
• 53% of technology workers would take a pay cut to telecommute
• An average of 1 000 additional cars a month on the road (NAAMSA)
• Companies today strive for instant gratification (Network Platforms)
• 82% of telecommuters have lowered stress levels
• 80% have higher morale and 69% are less absent when remote working
• American Express saved approximately $10 million with remote working
• Business can save US11 000 per person annually, with 50% of time spent at home working (Global Workforce Analytics)
• Work from home population has grown by 103% since 2015
• Remote workers are 2x more likely to work more than 40 hours a week (Data Bank: let them wear pyjamas)
• Remote workers are 20% more productive
• Employers embracing pyjamas saw reduced employee turnover of more than 50% (Stanford University)
• 60% employees would leave their job for a remote one with the same salary (PGI)
• 75% would rather do important tasks outside of the office (FlexJobs)
• Employees who work from home are more helpful (Wiley)

This article was first published in the August 2016 edition of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine. To read more, go to the Brainstorm website.