Self-provisioning becoming reality

Laying of Fibre Optic Cable in Sandton 

The picture above tells the story of the quiet revolution currently underway in South Africa. Motorists in Joburg and in many other major towns and cities around the country would have experienced the inconvenience caused by this revolution as evidenced by road closures and other interruptions. This quiet revolution is one that will see a major transformation of the South Africa telecoms landscape. 

It is important to note that the current investment by MTN, Vodacom, Neotel and CellC in fibre optic cable infrastructure was made possible by the introduction of the Electronic Communication Act of 2009 which effectively eliminated Telkom's monopoly in last-mile connectivity. The new law opened the way for self-provisioning and the laying of fibre optic is the best evidence of the self-provisioning philosophy truly becoming reality. To be sure, today Telkom remains a central role player in last-mile connectivity in South Africa, however over time as the fibre optic cable currently being laid comes on stream, each of the operators will become self-reliant and will one day be able to deliver services without ever touching any of Telkom's infrastructure. The logic of self-provisioning is that it will enable each network operator to determine its own pricing, end-to-end and the expected benefit for the end-user is that telecoms prices will come down as a result.