In a press statement issued on Wednesday, 23 April 2014, MTN announced that it plans to commercially launch 100Mbps fibre-to-the home (FTTH) services in South Africa on 1 June 2014.
MTN said that it demonstrated its FTTH offering to residents of Monaghan Farm, a gated estate located 30km north of Johannesburg, on 12 April 2014.
“MTN is currently rolling out aggressive deployment to high-density urban areas, such as high-end gated communities, boomed-off suburbs and high-rise buildings,” MTN said in its statement.
The operators said that advanced discussions are underway with several other residential sites.
“The roll-out is a demand-driven extension of the company’s already fast-expanding fibre connectivity backbone, utilising Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, to business parks and residential estates in all major cities,” MTN said.
“We are massively excited by the momentum that our pre-launch has already created,” Eben Albertyn, chief technology officer of MTN SA is quoted as saying. “By pioneering the technology in South Africa (and indeed Africa, for the current set of speeds on offer), we are sealing our position as the provider of choice.”
According to MTN, the estimated connectivity date for homes in the Monaghan Farm estate is mid-May, with in excess of 60% of the residents having signed up. Offers vary based on desired Internet speed, ranging from 10 to 100 Mbps.
Speed trials at the pre-launch event clocked up to 150.2Mbps, MTN said, while earlier this year it demonstrated lab trials of up to 1Gbps on their fibre network.
Pricing is currently only available to residents and is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, dependant on the amount of infrastructure and civil engineering required for each estate, MTN said.
The operator said that its FTTH programme will be largely demand-driven, and invited homeowner associations and members of the public to express their interest by contacting the company using the e-mail address broadband@mtn.co.za.
