Vodacom's recent R13.2 billion transaction with telecommunications service providers Vumatel, Dark Fiber Africa and Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) marks the beginning of an ambitious plan to bridge the huge digital divide.

On November 10, Vodacom announced that it would work with Remgro and New GX Capital to acquire a joint controlling interest in a new entity composed of assets such as Vumatel and Dark Fiber Africa (DFA).

Upon completion, Vodacom will hold a 30% stake in the newly formed entity (temporarily referred to as InfraCo).

Community Investment Ventures (CIVH) is the parent company of DFA and Vumatel and holds the remaining 70% of InfraCo.

CIVH CEO Raymond Ndlovu shared his vision with The Citizen to promote fiber optics for free to the most vulnerable groups and regions in South Africa and provide everyone with affordable Internet access.

Ndlovu said that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the country's digital transformation and emphasized the need to increase broadband access during the lockdown.

"The whole world is going through a digital revolution, and the core of this revolution is connectivity or broadband activities," he added.

Globally, online educational institutions opened up access to their materials during the blockade, paving the way for democratization of information access.

However, only the connected person can access this new information portal and related opportunities.

Ndlovu said: "The plan is to allow everyone, regardless of their background, location, education and financial status, to go online and access a whole new world of information."

CIVH's vision is to move from core/traditional households to low LSM areas such as Soweto, Voslulus, and Mitchell Plains, where the fiber optic connection foundation is at an advanced stage.

"We intend to enter townships and smaller secondary cities and towns."

CIVH operates an open access network, which means that the company bears the financial, technical and environmental risks of laying the cable.

Ndlovu said: "We pay for it, we build it."

"We enable anyone with the ability and means to connect with a fixed transparent fee. Everyone pays the same price," he explained.

In the traditional field, the end user signs a contract with the service provider and pays once a month. But Ndlovu said that they will use the prepaid model in areas with lower LSM.

Fiber access in lower LSM areas will also mark a shift in spectrum/wireless radio frequency bands, which use specific and more costly radio frequencies.

"That's why you hear people complain that their data is quickly completed-this is because radio frequencies are much more expensive," he explained.

Although cable theft is weakening the country's railway and Eskom operations, Ndlovu said that fiber optic technology can almost prove crime because it does not use copper, which is very attractive to criminals.

"The fiber is difficult to extract; it is laid in a thick, firmly fixed cable, and the fiber itself is glass," Ndlovu explained.

"It's worthless in the hands of any possible thief."

CIVH was one of the first companies to bring technology infrastructure to Mitchell Plains, Voslorus, and Soweto. Ndlovu said that competing cable infrastructure companies are more interested in entering rural areas.

"In some places we call it overbuilding, where another company will come to the same place where we are digging trenches. It's like building two railway lines in one area," he said.

Ndlovu stated that CIVH is expanding the type of infrastructure technology used for the project. "We can only say that this is more than trench digging," he hinted.

Ndlovu was tight-lipped about revealing too much information about the new technology, but promised to provide more details in the future.

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