South Africa is experiencing a wave of investment in fibre optic communications, with hundreds of millions being spent on the rollout of fibre cables in our major cities and surrounding suburbs providing “Fibre-to-the-Business” and “Fibre-to-the-Home” internet services.All the major telecommunications companies and even smaller players are part of the land grab to connect as many customers as possible as quickly as possible. This is a very positive development for the country as we race to catch up with the rest of the world and some of our African counterparts in the delivery of low cost broadband internet services. However, the fibre rush has also created some short term challenges to the industry and the municipalities that need to manage and plan these extensive cable installations in our cities, not to mention the pressures put on the landlords of our business premises.
We have seen first-hand in Pietermaritzburg the impact to business when cooperative planning fails affecting other services, such as the electricity and water supply.
As the representative voice of business, the PCB is conducting a survey to establish the true business demand for fibre communications within the city. Our hope is that the survey will be well supported, by members and non-members alike, to provide meaningful insight, based on which we can work with the city and suppliers to develop a structured approach to the deployment of fibre in our city. In this way we aim to minimise the interruption of services, accelerate the deployment of fibre, and importantly, reduce the connectivity costs, allowing a greater percentage of our business community to take advantage of high speed internet communications.
Our vision is, assuming a strong response, that the installed infrastructure will be the foundation of a “Smart City”, allowing the city the ability to remotely manage service delivery in real time. This feasibly would include water and sanitations services, electricity supply and energy management, surveillance and security services, transportation and public Wi-Fi services.
One Step at a Time
For now, all we are asking is that you participate in our survey and encourage as many people as possible within your business network, to complete the survey on our website, whether they be members of our chamber or not.
As a community we can build a better city at a lower cost to us all.
Please click here for the survey link.