Fibretime’s 100Mbps fibre for R5 a day a winner

Fibertime — formerly the Kayamandi Fiber project — is rapidly connecting homes in Kayamandi and Gqeberha, and it is currently rolling out to more townships across South Africa.

As of Thursday, 9 May 2024, Fibertime has connected 9,100 homes in South African townships, split between Kayamandi with 7,800 and townships in Gqeberga with a further 1,300.

“As of December 2023, we saw 1.8GB of traffic per connected user per 24-hour session,” added VulaCoin CEO Steve Briggs.

VulaCoin is the cryptocurrency and digital wallet system behind Fibertime and at least 40 Internet service providers nationwide.

Briggs told MyBroadband that the digital Showmax vouchers it offered customers for a trial period were very successful and will hopefully be added to the VulaCoin digital marketplace.

“Streaming videos are one of the most popular Internet applications our customers use,” he said.

“Having said this, our customers constantly reference the abundance of free streaming options (both music and video) that their newfound digital access enables them to experience.”

Former iBurst and Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig launched Fibertime (then-Isizwe) in November 2022 to provide cheap uncapped fibre to South African townships.

The company began building its network in August 2022 and went live with the first phase on 7 November 2022.

It connected 3,000 homes in the Kayamandi township near Stellenbosch with uncapped fibre broadband, offering customers a download speed of 100Mbps.

It started preparing to launch new product offerings like Showmax vouchers in December 2022, after rolling out to 4,500 homes.

“We recently connected another chunk of the Kayamandi population, this time using Wi-Fi on a kind of gum pole, if you can call it that,” said Briggs.

“We call it a fibre tower, and that’s brought on about another 1,500 homes. We have now connected approximately 4,500 homes in Kayamandi.”

The Showmax voucher trial lets customers buy Showmax streaming vouchers on the Fibertime network using the VulaCoin currency.

“Showmax is working with us on a bundle solution where our users in Kayamandi can benefit from a Showmax pass,” said Briggs.

“We hope over the next few weeks to continue working with them and others to sell vouchers through our VulaCoin wallet, effectively making post-paid-type products like that more palatable to the prepaid market.”

In May 2023, Fibertime told MyBroadband that it had connected 891 homes in Kyamandi with fibre and that users on the network had consumed more than 490TB of data since its launch.

It was interesting to note that Isizwe’s new figure of 891 homes connected is significantly lower than the 4,500 it reported in December 2022.

This is because it had to substantially change its model after encountering problems with Wi-Fi signal degradation due to the type of metal many shacks are built with.

In December 2023, Briggs told MyBroadband that his team had completed the installation of the Fibertime network in Kayamandi and connected 7,500 homes.

“We are consistently seeing more than R7.50 per connected home per day for connections older than six months, validating our business case,” said Briggs.

“We plan to connect our fibre network to 200,000 new homes in the next 12 months, encompassing townships in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and North West province.”