Kathy Gibson reports – Openserve has launched its fibre to the room (FTTR) offering in partnership with Huawei – the first to bring this service to the South African market.
“We believe FTTR will enhance how our customers experience connectivity,” says Makgosi Mabaso, chief commercial officer of OpenServe. “We are taking the power of fibre and extending it seamlessly to every room. With FTTR, there are no dead zones and no buffering.”
The FTTR offering will be delivered through Openserve’s Internet service provider (ISP) partners.
Koketso Maruma, wholesale executive at Openserve, points out that South African users currently experience several challenges with their WiFi connectivity.
These include weak signal, insufficient coverage, and frequent disconnection.
Customers are demanding full coverage, a stable connection, and high speeds.
“What’s clear is that it’s time to reconnect the home and the business,” **Khosa** says.
While traditional home networks rely on mesh networks, the Openserve FTTR solution delivers a fully optical network on the premises, delivering up to 1Gbps with full coverage.
Target users are those willing to pay a small premium for the high performance they demand.
Household types include large houses, those with multiple rooms, or those with multiple floors. Openserve projects a potential market opportunity of 500 000 South African households.
Customers can also use the service for storage.
Small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) are another target market for the FTTR services with cafes, restaurants, shops, and salons all requiring security, point of sale, and WiFi.
**Khosa** points out there are 3,5-million active small businesses in South Africa including 70 000 salons, 100 000 cafes, 500 000 retail outlets and 150 000 small restaurants.
“Digitalisation is a critical need for all of them.”
Openserve has developed the 4A package that can help ISPs quickly acquire users and deploy the FTTR service.
Featured picture: Huawei showcases fibre to the room in a house in Cape Town