Dewald Booysen, Maziv Chief Operating Officer, said:
Fiber optic network operator Dark Fiber Africa (DFA) and its parent company Maziv have strengthened their network expansion project with two additional infrastructure upgrades.
These will improve network stability in dense areas, accelerate the delivery of new services, and future-proof the network for scale and sustainable growth, DFA said in a statement.
In August 2023, DFA announced a R400 million fiber network expansion project that will see the deployment of 800 dry underground distribution panels (DUDCs) in high network density areas across South Africa.
Today, DFA announced the launch of two further initiatives aimed at increasing the effectiveness of DUDC projects.
Andreas Uys, Chief Technology Officer at Maziv, said: “The two new infrastructure upgrades build on the foundation laid by the 2023 infrastructure upgrade and will improve the reliability and speed of service delivery to our customers starting in Gauteng. This is the densest part of the world, and our goal is to bridge existing customers to the new infrastructure as quickly as possible.”
According to DFA, the first upgrade effort, the “Yellow Cable” project, aims to reduce the number of access points used by service teams to perform maintenance and install new connections.
By streamlining these processes, DFA can increase network stability and resiliency and accelerate service delivery, the company notes.
“From a technical perspective, we are rebuilding the backhaul infrastructure from each DUDC unit to the nearest aggregation node and between core aggregation nodes. Capacity is expanded and new services are brought to the DUDC unit. It’s easier to deploy directly, so it’s faster to build and more cost-effective,” says Uys.
The company said the second of the two projects, the “gray cable,” will effectively separate DFA's infrastructure from client infrastructure, increase DFA's capacity and increase bandwidth speeds, and provide new managed services. It adds that it can be delivered more quickly.
It also increases redundancy and route diversity, providing customers with protection against network isolation and loss of network and Internet connectivity.
Dewald Booysen, Chief Operating Officer of Maziv, said: “In 2023, we implemented multiple recovery plans to restore stability to our network following vandalism and third-party damage that caused numerous outages. These efforts were largely successful. However, this was a temporary measure in preparation for a major upgrade scheduled for 2024.”
Mr Booysen added that there are already several DUDCs in the Southern Gauteng region and that DFA plans to complete DUDC coverage in 13 divisions in the region by the end of September.
“This is an aggressive goal and depends on several things going as planned. It also depends on things that are beyond our control, such as vandalism that diverts time and critical resources from projects like this. We plan as much as we can for problems that don't exist,” says Booysen.
“DFA customers will be regularly informed about the progress of the yellow and gray cable project rollout. Our goal is to be fully transparent and provide concrete data showing the impact of these upgrades. to our customers. They will be able to benchmark this progress against our stated goals for national network performance.
“We look forward to being able to demonstrate to our customers the effectiveness in the upgraded areas. We want to be able to monitor it.”