Open-access infrastructure and connectivity provider FibreCo Telecommunications has lit up the first city along its national fibre route between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Under the ‘FibreCo Kroonstad connectivity project’, the Free State city of Kroonstad is the first in FibreCo’s town connectivity plans to connect “many more” towns along its 4 000 km national fibre route.

“Internet connectivity in Kroonstad will benefit from a substantial enhancement as FibreCo completes its roll-out of fibre in the town, making reliable high-speed broadband connectivity more accessible to the community,” explains FibreCo CEO Simon Harvey.

Access Global is the first Internet service provider to partner with FibreCo in the city, with customers already benefiting from access to high-speed fibre broadband services.

He explains that, according to Statistics South Africa, only 5.4% of households in the Free State have access to the Internet at home, while only 9.9% have access at work.

“It is clear that there is an urgent need to hasten access to high-speed broadband connectivity. The biggest challenge to universal broadband is infrastructure cost,” he says.

The company’s open-access model in Kroonstad allows any number of service providers and operators to buy connectivity without the large capital outlay of building the infrastructure themselves.

In addition, FibreCo has provided direct high-speed broadband connectivity services for clinics in Kroonstad as part of its contributions to socioeconomic developmental activities, including elearning and ehealth, and continued its partnerships with provincial and municipal partners to connect them to the FibreCo network.

“Together, these clinics service over 30 000 people monthly, which is central to national government efforts to get the National Health Insurance off the ground,” says FibreCo business development executive Sammy Mafu.

“FibreCo has also installed a fixed-fibre node at the Moqhaka municipality, making it the first Free State municipality with its own dedicated 1 Gb/s-ready fixed connectivity node,” he adds.

At the end of May, FibreCo opened up its open-access dark fibre link along the N3 from Johannesburg to Durban, including the subsea cable landing stations of Seacom and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System on the east coast.