Conduct Telecommunications has launched its first fibre-ready area in Cape Town.

Having provisioned open-access fibre to several businesses in Claremont, Conduct plans to soon expand to commercial precincts in Stellenbosch, Westlake, Muizenburg, Tygerberg, Bellville and Milnerton.

By proactively connecting commercial premises to dark fibre, Conduct makes the fibre available to third-party Internet service providers that “light” and sell capacity and services over the infrastructure to its clients.

The company’s CEO Johan Pretorius explains that Conduct focuses on last mile connectivity. “There is sufficient network capacity deployed in the cities by several operators, we are not duplicating this. The problem is getting from these fibre routes into the buildings and to the end customer. This is where we are focusing on closing the gap.

“While this has been happening and as adoption of fibre steadily grows, it remains relatively expensive to most enterprises. However, by installing on risk, we leverage economies of scale to improve efficiencies and drive down costs, which in turn sparks adoption.”

An open-access network provides access to all service providers on equal terms and occupants are therefore free to choose the best service offering from any service provider. Optical fibre offers almost limitless bandwidth capabilities, has excellent reliability and provides occupants with the possibility of fast, world-class services.

Pretorius says service providers utilise their open-access network to supply anywhere between 2Mbps and 1Gbps connections to businesses. “They have access to the fibre on equal terms and can now compete on quality, cost and type of services. This gives end-users choice.”