Fibre infrastructure and high-capacity mobile networks are the only ways that South Africa can deal with the data explosion heading its way, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub says.

Speaking at the yearly My Broadband Conference, in Midrand, on Wednesday, he said data use, particularly on the back of increased video-on-demand service offerings, had surged, with operators scrambling to meet demand amid spectrum constraints.

It was expected that around ten-million South African households would be serviced by mobile networks, while fibre networks would address the broadband needs of another five-million households.

However, South Africa was “severely” held back as the critical digital terrestrial television (DTT) migration that would see the release of the “heart” of the future data supply – spectrum – was lagging significantly behind schedule.

With the country having missed the International Telecommunications Union-stipulated June deadline for the DTT migration, it would need to wait a few more years before the much-coveted analogue broadcasting spectrum was released.

The digital dividend contained within the analogue broadcasting frequencies would enable mobile operators to do more with less spectrum – and at significantly lower costs – as the lower frequencies currently allocated to analogue broadcasting enabled wider coverage and in-building coverage, compared with the spectrum currently available to mobile operators.

“Spectrum is at the heart of everything we do,” Joosub commented, asserting that the challenge of spectrum should be at the top of the agenda for all industry stakeholders.

Further, he added that South Africa, compared with global trends, was overly dependent on mobile; however, several operators were currently deploying extensive fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks to offer faster, reliable broadband services.

Fixed-line operator Telkom aimed to deploy FTTH connections to one-million homes by March 2018, with more than 38 000 homes already connected.

Vumatel, Dark Fibre Africa and MTN had also been deploying FTTH networks to residents of Gauteng’s affluent neighbourhoods.

Vodacom also aimed to advance its fibre ambitions as it bought converged communications operator Neotel.

The company, which was preparing for a data revolution, said data now accounted for 35% of the group’s revenue.

Vodacom had initiated an accelerated capital investment programme that had resulted in wider coverage and faster connection speeds, with the company’s network now between 35% and 45% faster than a year ago.