South Africans seem to have a love-hate relationship with fibre. South Africans love the connection and fast internet that fibre brings but hate the fibre deployment that entails digging up trenches and then building the pavements back to its original state.
First, you have to understand the trenching.
Fibre Network Operators (FNOs) such as Frogfoot use two methods for trenching: microtrenching and conventional trenching. Microtrenching uses a machine that cuts a neat route along the road, so the pavement remains untouched. With conventional trenching, contractors and their workers are used to perform shallow excavations – barricaded for safety – along the verge of the pavement. Your garden or driveway might be lifted, but accessibility to your driveways and walkways are given priority during the construction.
Fibre lines are then run on either side of the street, so that homes on both sides can be easily connected and then wrap around the block to form “boxes”.
At some point, you have to connect all the boxes, and you need to create road crossings. These are done either by a horizontal directional drilling (HDD) machine (which drills underneath the road's surface, and can be directed to connect drill pits on either side of the road) or cutting slits in the road into which the fibre is laid, before it is filled with ground.
Next comes the clean up.
Reinstatement is carried out in accordance with all the requirements set by the municipality, in order to be issued with wayleaves. It is also to ensure minimal impact for communities.
More and more people are embracing the digital landscape, as we use video calls to keep in touch with family and friends, stream our favourite movies and play online games. Sometimes, multiple people would be on the internet and if you are on a fixed wireless, you know what a pain that is.
While the alternatives such as mobile and fixed wireless remain popular in South Africa, more opt for fibre due to its cost-effectiveness and better connectivity.
It is believed that the faster the internet connection, the more data users consume. The arrival of open access fibre networks allows users to do everything they want online as well as provide people with the ability to choose their own internet service provider.
IOL TECH