Estate Living September 2016 Digital Issue | Page 51

The number of competing ISPs has increased
dramatically, with each offering different
benefits, and appealing to different users –
so a careful choice of options is imperative.
Some ISPs, however, enter into exclusive
arrangements with a collective or corporate
user, such as an office block or housing estate
community, or even a suburb. Although
it’s theoretically never too late to make a
change, there will be increasing, and possibly
debilitating, costs attached to making changes
if flexibility isn’t built in at ground level – that
is, at the planning stage of a development.
Open access gives the customer the greatest
choice.
However, open access isn’t popular with
everyone in the supply chain, as it encourages
open competition with less opportunity
for exploitative profits. Users are often not
knowledgeable enough to make informed
choices or be aware when they can demand a
greater choice.
The FTTH Council Africa has been formed to
put standards and ethical practices in place
to help protect the customer, and Link Africa
is intensely involved in ensuring that those
standards benefit the end user, who often
has the weakest voice.

There will unfortunately always be mavericks
– who are not members of the council − who
think nothing of stealing trenched channel
space or locking in unsuspecting clients.
André Hoffmann, Link Africa’s Head of
Projects, is passionate about doing all that
can be done to make fibre accessible to
everyone, and is committed to bridging the
“digital divide.”
“We’re going to take fibre into the
townships, and we’re going to make
a difference,” Hoffmann says. With its
significant involvement in the FTTH Council
Africa, underpinned by a commitment
to open access, Link Africa is a dark fibre
provider whose vision is to illuminate South
Africa with the liberating light of fibre optics.
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