New Age2.png Fibre democratisation Telkom aims to connect a million homes to Internet by 2018 at lower prices Bernard Sathekge, The New Age, Johannesburg, 8 September 2015 Telkom yesterday said it would connect 1 million homes to its fibre network by 2018, substantially bringing down the cost of internet connectivity. By the end of last month 38000 homes had access to fibre, with 1317 long-term evolution (LTE) sites added to the network. The fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) expansion is a countrywide project. Last June Telkom said broadband expansion in the country for the next five years would cost billions of rands. Telkom said it would double the fibre rollout to 70000 homes by December, and will have the capacity to connect 150000 homes by March and 500000 by the end of 2016. By 2018, Telkom will have provided fibre access to 1 million homes. Speaking at the Southern African Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC) yesterday, Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko said Telkom was committed to "democratising broadband access". "We have set ourselves the objective of contributing to transforming the South African economy. South Africa is a developing democracy and we want to accelerate this development," Maseko said. While Telkom's fibre rollout for large metropolitan areas will continue, the company is working with other government agencies to provide broadband to underserviced areas. "We must recognise that the issue of access lies at the heart of the divide. You either have access or you don't. It's as simple as that. To cross the digital divide, you must provide universal access. "Telkom has already begun reducing wholesale prices in order to bring down the cost to communicate and has launched a 1Mb DSL service to reduce the barriers to broadband access," he said. Maseko called on mobile operators to join Telkom to bridge the digital divide. "If we are to overcome the access deficit and in light of the mobile revolution and the benefits this has engendered, South Africa needs to see wholesale access to the mobile local loop and active sharing of the radio access network. "This is an imperative and an important precursor for democratising broadband," Maseko said. [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
