Vumatel 'fibre to the home' optic fibre in Observatory

[Mark Neville]

Some of you may have found flyers from Vumatel in your letterbox.

A few weeks ago I met with two representatives of Vumatel (vumatel.co.za) about their company's plans to install optic fibre cables in Observatory. They asked for a meeting in my capacity as Ward 57 committee member.

Here's what I leant:

Vuma (as they prefer to call it) is a private company that specialises in installing and operating 'FTTH' (Fibre To The Home') optic fibre networks. It has been very active in Johannesburg for few years, and has recently laid cables in the Seapoint area and the City Bowl. It has a fairly good industry reputation, and seems to know what its doing. The owners have private + debt funding (R3bn from Standard Bank I believe).

Vuma's normal approach is lay optic fibre cables in ducts under the ground, and extend this to individual homes on the request of the home owner, or an ISP acting on the owner's behalf. But in Observatory they intend to string cable between the electricity poles. A different company called 'Fibrehoods' came to an agreement with the City a few months back to do this anywhere in Cape Town where there are suitable electricity poles; Vuma recently bought Fibrehoods and so have gained the rights to do this.

Vuma's marketing approach is to try and get as many people as possible to "commit" to their service in advance; the flyers though our letterboxes are an effort to achieve this. They push for a non-binding "commitment" as an indication that sufficient members of a given community are potentially interested in their service, and then expect to "convert" at least 30% of the homes to fibre within a six month period.

If you're not clear, then the advantages of using optic fibre cables are that: (1) optic fibres have far more capacity than Telkom copper cables (though few people can afford to use the capacity they are capable of delivering). This is what most of us think of as "speed" or Megabits per second or Mbps or just "megs"; (2) optic fibre cable has much lower levels of attenuation or signal strength loss; and (3) exhibits lower latency or "time delay" in sending a bit of digital data between you and where ever. Last (4) its not subject to electromagnetic interference, or affected by the weather. And it's pretty robust and stable -- it doesn't need much in the way of maintenance unless it gets broken.

There are a few issues with the Vuma model that people should be aware of, if they are thinking about using the service. These won't matter to most people, but are worth documenting for the record.

First, Vuma says that it is an 'open access' infrastructure provider. This means that it owns the optic fibre network, and lets ISPs use it to deliver an Internet service to you at your home. Vuma charges the ISP for the use of its optic fibre, and the ISP passes this charge on to you (the end user) along with the cost of the data that you use up. But its not really an infrastructure provider; actually it's an access network provider, as it operates an active network service over the fibre in a neighbourhood, and controls the "speed" (actually capacity) of each connection. The ISP simply provides the Internet bandwidth; the ISP has no control over the access line speed or network performance. So really you're becoming a customer of Vuma. If you have a problem with your service, you will have to talk to your ISP, who will then take it up with Vuma. Which puts you two steps away from the actual network operator.

This is not a bad model; just that there is more to it than Vuma let on (at least to end users).

BTW, Vuma will be "backhauling" the traffic from Observatory to the ISPs using the City's Metro Area network between the City's switching point at Salt River Fire Station and the ISP peering point at Teraco in Newlands. Needless to say, the City charges them to do this. The trenching that is currently under way along the north side of LMR is to extend the City's optic fibre network from Salt River through to Mowbray (though this work is not directly related to the Vuma marketing push). This cable will be used to connect up the Observatory library and the Metro Police Training Academy. I have a commitment from the project manager that the contractor will re-instate the whole pavement properly; this commitment has been made to Paddy Chapel as well.

Second, stringing fibre on electricity poles is second-best to burying it under the ground. It's much more likely to be damaged, and customers will have a cable from their nearest pole to the roof of their house. More clutter in the sky above our streets. But on the other hand, we won't have the disruption of the every pavement being dug up to install the cable ducts (at least, not by Vuma. See below.)

Third, and a consequence of point two: because Vuma is stringing its cables from the electricity poles, it can't install big enough cables to run a dedicated fibre pair to every house. Underground cables have 72 or 144 fibres per cable, so each house gets a dedicated pair. But aerial cables this big are too heavy to hang from the poles. So Vuma is going to use a different architecture, called a 'PON'. This stands for 'Passive Optical Network', which is a technology that uses unpowered optic fibre splitters to share a single fibre pair with multiple customers. It works OK, but it does put an upper limit on the capacity available to each house. Elsewhere, where Vuma has installed underground cables, they have used a point-to-point dedicated pair architecture, which is much better.

As I say, these issues probably won't matter to most people, but its good to be aware of them.

I have heard that another optic fibre provider called 'Octotel' (octotel.co.za), which is associated with local ISP RSAWEB (rsaweb.co.za), is looking closely at Woodstock/Salt River/Observatory/Mowbray.

Full disclosure: I am part owner of an ISP called Vanilla (vanilla.co.za), which provides point-to-point wireless Internet connections (as well as providing service over City-owned, Octatel and LightSpeed fibre where ever this is available).  Vanilla has a good customer base in Observatory.

I have not received any payment or incentive from Vumatel to promote or advertise its services.

I hope this helps you all to understand what's going on, and help individuals to make an informed decision.

If anyone has any questions about optic fibre networks, I'll do my best to answer them.

Cheers,

Mark Neville

[Peter Brooks]

Hi Mark,

I know you posted about fibre quite a long time ago. I was just
wondering what the current situation was.

I've seen the installing fibre all over Obs. The activity seems to
have stopped, recently, as if they've finished.

Which companies are offering fibre services? What do they cost? Do you
know the best deal?

Regards,
Peter

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[Mike Bird]

FYI CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN VUMA AND OURSELVES LAST WEEK:

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 10:31 AM, Mike Bird wrote:

Hi

 

I’m writing to express disappointment in the delay in the delivery of your infrastructure in the Observatory area.

 

Last year, you guys were seriously on  the ball with letting us all know how, as the “new kid on the block”, having completed a deal with COCT regarding new plans for aerial infrastructure, you were going to bring us all up to speed and into the 21^st century with the latest tech in fast internet.

 

While we all got super excited with the swanky way in which you guys presented yourselves in 2017 – (young studenty types coming around door-to-door with gel-upped hair, in fancy pants, pink shirts and dangling-around-the-neck ID cards explaining how awesome Vumatel is), we’re now left a little lost as there has been no comms from your side as to the 3 month delay in your self-penned completion date of January 2018 (attached).

 

When we ourselves do phone and find out why its taking so long, we’re confronted with unawares advisers giving us generic answers like “when they finish the infrastructure…” or “when there is more interest in the area…” or “its difficult to give an exact date…”

 

So, we’re faced with having to continue to use Telkom’s archaic infrastructure with internet speeds that are paleolithic until you guys get your acts together, pull finger and get the project finished? Not so swanky as before Team Vuma…

 

The very least you could do is have some kind of communications strategy to say “hey guys, we know we’re behind, but we’re on it and doing all we can to get it sorted…” or something like that… Its not so hard…

 

Perhaps some of the budget you spent last year on the pink shirts, could have been held back for these sorts of possible eventualities?

 

#justsaying

 

Sincerely

 

Mike “happy we haven’t paid anything yet” Bird

Irritated resident of Observatory

______________________________________________________________________________________

Good Morning Mike,

 

I absolutely understand your frustration! 

 

We have faced many "roadblocks" trying to get this first of its kind rollout in Cape Town approved and completed.

 

To break it down for you, we waited far longer than expected for the approvals for road cuts from the City and this was the biggest factor in the extended timeframe.

 

What i can very happily tell you is that we will officially be going live between the end of March and Mid April as we are now just finishing up the final fibre testing before we can take the area live.

 

Please do accept my apology for the frustration experienced that comes from waiting prolonged periods and please know that we will be be sending out an update email to all residents in Observatory informing them of what is happening and letting them know when we will be going live.

 

Thank you for you patience and please know that your wait is almost over.

 

Please do not hesitate to let me know if i can shed any more light on anything.

 

Please have a great day further.

 

Regards 

 

Dane Botha 

Fibrehoods Manager

-----

 

Best Regards

 

The Fibrehoods Team!

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Best Regards

Mike Bird