DFA has invested over R800-million to upgrade and future-proof its national fibre network to address the growing demand for reliable, high-speed internet.
DFA is part of the Maziv group, and DFA’s national network delivers connectivity and backhaul for mobile operators, data centres, internet service providers and public sector institutions.
The latest investment follows DFA’s R400-million Dry Underground Distribution Cabinet (DUDC) network enhancement project launched in August 2023, which focused on stabilising and future-proofing DFA’s network infrastructure. The network investment has already delivered measurable results, including a 40% improvement in new circuit delivery times and a 100% improvement in mean time to repair (MTTR) where the new architecture is operational.
“We have improved the average number of new circuits delivered from 800 to 1 500 per month. In one month, we delivered nearly 2 000 new connections – a record for us. We’re also enabling higher line speeds and increasing available capacity to meet the changing needs of our customers,” says Andreas Uys, chief technology officer of Maziv.
“With the new architecture supported by a recently consolidated PMO office, we are very focused on reducing delivery times while driving high-quality service. Our target this year is to deliver up to 2 500 connections per month,” Uys adds.
“We could potentially deliver fibre connectivity to buildings already on our 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.”
In late 2022, DFA faced customer complaints about network instability and slower service delivery. However, Dewald Booysen, chief operations officer for Maziv, highlights the significant improvements the firm has made in improving its customer experience.
“We’ve worked tirelessly to address these challenges,” says Booysen. “Our network upgrades have vastly improved resilience and diversity in the network. We still maintained a national uptime of over 99.5%, even during high-incident periods. Currently, we’re performing at an exceptional 99,99% uptime.”
He explains that maintaining a national network of over 15 000km 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. Despite these challenges, DFA has improved its MTTR by 100% through strategic interventions over the past 12 months.
“We are seeing consistent and predictable improvements month on month,” says Booysen. “We have drastically improved the time taken to repair customer faults while simultaneously delivering new circuits, conducting ongoing maintenance, and deploying new network architecture.”
Booysen points out that the service challenges were predominantly in Gauteng and not across the entire country.
“Of the 15 000km of fibre, about 40% of that infrastructure is in Gauteng, where we experienced the bulk of our challenges, which is just under 5 000 kilometers of fibre.”
Key to this improvement has been the introduction of dedicated service management points of contact for customers, a new consolidated project office driving improved delivery timelines, an enhanced partner programme and significant upgrades to the 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,” explains Booysen.