Welties residents urged to sign up for FTTH

Fibre to the Home (FTTH) networks are in high demand.

Ward 89 is currently on a mission to get residents to sign-up to have the fibre optics installed in their suburbs.

The first suburbs to enjoy the benefits of the optic cables were Greenside and Parkhurst.

According to Khumbulani Mpofu, who is a Ward 89 committee member, most residents in the Weltevreden Park area use Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and for the most part it’s nearly always down, or is slow because of network congestion.

“It is an old technology that makes use of the copper telephone lines to deliver internet data, and unfortunately it has many pitfalls, such as line attenuation the further the end user is from the phone exchange,” Mpofu said.

“Weltevreden Park is generally a middle-income suburb, so people require connectivity either to connect to corporate networks from home, to run their businesses or for educational and entertainment purposes,” said Mpofu, adding that there is also the spin-off that fibre attracts increases in property values generally for the connected neighbourhoods.

However, Mpofu said for the consideration to the 123net Fibre roll-out, residents need 350 signups – they are currently on 156 signups.

“We are second-placed in the rankings of suburbs that can qualify for a roll-out.” (See here)

Mpofu encouraged residents to sign up. “It becomes easier to deal with crime in the area and to raise awareness for community events that lead to the betterment of the community, such as public spaces and the upkeep of community spaces,” he said.

He also highlighted that the initiative encourages people to get to know one another.

Mpofu said the community have nominated 123Net Fibre because their expansion criteria is fairly transparent. He also added that the 123Net Fibre roll-out is driven largely by numbers of expressions of interest, which is unlike any of the other providers who are opaque about how they choose to roll-out into a particular area.

In addition, Mpofu highlighted that the service plans from 123net Fibre appear to canvass a whole range of usage requirements, which he said has free internet with no monthly fees to higher-end plans based on speed of the connection from one gigabyte per second (1gbps) to 100gbps.

“We think that this range of options will be well addressed in Weltevreden Park because of mixed use of residential and small business premises,” concluded Mpofu.

Residents can sign up here.

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