DURBAN – South Africa would need to invest in terrestrial fibre networks on the ground to help cater for the increasing demand for internet connection.
Senior research and consulting Manager at IDC South Africa Sabelo Dlamini said that while there had been significant investment in undersea cables, terrestrial fibre on the ground was next to non-existent. “South Africa has not invested in fixed infrastructure on the ground. This was left to Mobile Network Operators who have now reached saturation. MNOs are seeing a lot of traffic and needed to offload to alternative technologies,” said Dlamini.
He said that the bottlenecks to the rolling out of terrestrial fibre related more to regulation and implementation. “South Africa needs to implement digital migration to free up the digital spectrum. After that we will have to allocate more spectrum to mobile operators to deploy 4G since some are currently re-farming 3G to make 4G.”
Dlamini said the improvement of connectivity would need mobile operators to be assisted by institutions in the sector as well as the government to ensure that the country explored it fully to unlock the many opportunities that could be derived from the information communication technologies sector.
IDC South Africa said that the limited connectivity meant that people were spending more on data. Dlamini added that since mobile operators followed a particular model when distributing their services, the increased demand from residential zones as some users were now working from home could compromise the quality of the internet services. He added that resources that were generally reserved for businesses would be stretched.
South African mobile telecommunication operators said in mid-May that they had seen a greater demand for connectivity devices over the lockdown period.
MTN-SA said that it had seen an increase in the purchase of home wifi and fibre products by the first six weeks of the lockdown. By Mid-May, MTN-SA said it had also seen a shift in geographic consumption with very low usage in CBDs and higher than normal usage in suburbs.
Vodacom-SA said that there was a significant spike in their sales of connectivity devices in March ahead of the lockdown as consumers and businesses needed connectivity devices to work or be connected. The company expected the demand to continue due to the on-going demand for connectivity linked to remote working, remote entertainment and remote learning. The company also believed that contactless sales would drive more demand for notebooks and connectivity.
Telkom - SA said that it had also noted an increased demand for connectivity across all device types during this lockdown and a 30% to 40% surge in data traffic from both its mobile and FixedLine customers over the level 5 lockdown period.
Cell-C also said that they had seen an increase in fibre demand as consumers and businesses were looking for work and study from home connectivity.
At the time, all the mobile operators said that they were confident to manage the traffic.