South African altnet Vox Telecom has formed a commercial partnership with fibre broadband provider Vumatel, which recently began the deployment of an open access fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in upmarket Johannesburg suburb Parkhurst. On its website, Vox Telecom is offering three fibre service packages (4Mbps/50Mbps/100Mbps) available to Parkhurst residents/businesses signing up for the in-deployment FTTH connections from Vumatel, featuring a promotional offer giving free Vox ADSL internet service until the customer’s fibre line is installed. Vox advertises other benefits of the FTTH network including HD telephone calls via fibre. Separately, Vumatel has confirmed that its FTTH infrastructure rollout in Parkhurst has begun in earnest, having dug its first trenches in the suburb, while the firm has also launched a new website of its own, which advertises FTTH speeds of up to 1Gbps. As reported in June by CommsUpdate, Vumatel is aiming to deploy fibre-optic broadband to roughly 200,000 homes in around 100 suburbs/locations across South Africa over the next three to four years, at an estimated cost of ZAR2 billion-ZAR3 billion (USD186 million-USD279 million), while this month the company said it has been flooded with requests from various localities since undertaking the initial FTTH rollout project in Parkhurst. Under the open access network model, customers will be able to choose from multi-play service providers other than Vox Telecom, while it is not known if the latter intends to expand the partnership with Vumatel to other locations in due course.
