Telecommunications start-up Vumatel on Wednesday announced that the first homes in Parkhurst, Johannesburg, had gone live on its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network, providing residents with connection speeds of up to 1 Gb/s.

The Vumatel network provided fibre to homes on an open-access basis, which meant that any licensed service provider could use the fibre to supply services to its customers. Consumers taking up the fibre could also, therefore, choose a service provider and split their services, such as data, voice and Internet protocol television.

“Launching FTTH coupled with real consumer choice through open access is an exciting and ground-breaking development for South African Internet connectivity and usage. Not only does the network provide consumers with high-speed access but, [it] furthermore, provides the ability to have both choice and control of their access to the information super highway,” Vumatel CEO Niel Schoeman said.

He added that the company was on schedule with the roll-out of the Parkhurst network, with all the homes expected to be connected by February next year.

Following the Parkhurst project, Vumatel also planned to roll out its FTTH network across 41 other suburbs in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The company encouraged consumers to pledge their support to take up the FTTH offer on the Vumatel website, which would influence the company’s decision on which suburb would be next to receive fibre.

Meanwhile, Vumatel noted that several service providers had offers available to consumers over Vumatel’s open-access network, including MWEB, WebAfrica, Smart Village Cool Ideas, Cybersmart and Vox Telecom.

“This is extremely fast, extremely easy Internet access.  We’re excited to offer consumers not only extremely high-speed Internet, but the choice to decide on how they access it. Parkhurst is the first of many in South Africa and we look forward to soon announcing the next suburb scheduled to receive fibre,” Schoeman concluded.