This is according to Maziv chairman Pieter Uys, who told TechCentral that Maziv had to hit the brakes on a number of fibre builds as it had stretched its debt financing as far as it could. This meant projects in areas such as Alexandra, Soweto and Khayelitsha had to be paused.
"We have committed to spending R12-billion over the next five years to pass and connect unconnected homes - a million of these will be in lower-LSM areas. Big parts of Soweto are already done and we had already started in Alexandra. Unlocking the investment from Vodacom will allow us to continue expanding low-cost internet to other areas, like Khayelitsha," said Uys. Maziv subsidiary Vumatel deploys lower-cost fibre in these areas through its Vuma Reach and Vuma Key solutions.
The Reach product is the more sophisticated of the two offerings, with the most expensive tier capable of 100Mbit/s download speeds. Vuma Key offers 20Mbit/s contended shared connections for R99/month.