Wholesale, open-access fibre-infrastructure provider Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has invested over R800-million to upgrade and future-proof its national fibre network as demand for reliable, high-speed Internet grows.

The new investment followed DFA’s R400-million dry underground distribution cabinet network enhancement project launched in August 2023, which focused on stabilising and modernising its network infrastructure.

DFA, part of the Maziv group, delivers connectivity and backhaul for mobile operators, data centres, Internet service providers and public sector institutions.

The company’s network investments have delivered measurable results, including a 40% improvement in new circuit delivery times from 800 to 1 500 a month, and a 100% improvement in mean time to repair (MTTR) where the new architecture is operational.

In one month, DFA delivered nearly 2 000 new connections – a record for the company – with a target of up to 2 500 connections a month this year, says Maziv CTO Andreas Uys.

“We are also enabling higher line speeds and increasing available capacity to meet the changing needs of our customers,” Uys explains, adding that the new architecture is supported by a recently consolidated project management office (PMO).

“We are very focused on reducing delivery times while driving high-quality service.”

Further, DFA could potentially deliver fibre connectivity to buildings that are already on its network within 14 days and to non-connected buildings within 55 days.

“These upgrades and changes in our PMO are critical to meeting the increasing demand for fast, stable Internet services,” Uys continues.

Maziv COO Dewald Booysen highlights the significant improvements the firm has made in improving its customer experience. In late 2022, DFA faced customer complaints about network instability and slower service delivery.

He explains that maintaining a national network of over 15000 km can be challenging, with force majeure events, such as third-party construction damage, vandalism, copper theft, severe weather and other environmental factors, more than doubling in the past two years.

Booysen points out that the service challenges, however, were predominantly in Gauteng and not across the entire country.

“Of the 15 000 km of fibre, about 40% of that infrastructure is in Gauteng, where we experienced the bulk of our challenges, which is just under 5 000 km of fibre.”

“We have worked tirelessly to address these challenges. Our network upgrades have vastly improved resilience and diversity in the network,” he says, noting that DFA still maintains a national uptime of over 99.5%, even during high-incident periods, with a current performance of 99.99% uptime.

DFA’s MTTR has also improved by 100% through strategic interventions over the past 12 months.

“We are seeing consistent and predictable improvements month on month. We have drastically improved the time taken to repair customer faults while simultaneously delivering new circuits, conducting ongoing maintenance and deploying new network architecture.”

Key to this improvement has been the introduction of dedicated service management points of contact for customers, the new consolidated PMO driving improved delivery timelines, an enhanced partner programme and significant upgrades to its network operations centre (NOC).

“The new service management initiatives improve customer service and provide customers with a single point of contact for new services and support, while automation and revised business processes within the NOC ensure transparency and proactive communication with customers,” Booysen states, acknowledging the key roles played by DFA’s partners during this challenging period.

Since the company first started its rollout in 2007, it has deployed fibre infrastructure across major metropolitans, secondary cities and towns across South Africa, making its fibre network accessible to more end-users across the country.