Maziv is targeting connecting more than 8 000 cellular base stations with high-speed fibre.
Maziv, the parent company of Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) and Vumatel, says the cash injection and assets from Vodacom, following the merger, will help to scale its business, as it targets passing 50 000 South African homes per month with high-speed fibre.
After years of regulatory hurdles, the Competition Appeal Court in August approved the long-delayed R14 billion merger of Vodacom, SA’s largest mobile operator, and the fibre infrastructure giant.
The acquisition will proceed under the revised conditions agreed to by the merger parties and Competition Commission ahead of the 22 July hearing.
Speaking last week, at the Conext Conference, organised by Digital Council Africa, Maziv Group CEO Dietlof Mare noted that while the merger remains subject to final regulatory sign-off from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, the transaction would support its broadband expansion and infrastructure upgrade, and create jobs.
As part of the merger conditions, Maziv committed to spending at least R12 billion over the next five years, earmarked for broadband infrastructure expansion and maintenance, particularly in underserved areas, he noted.
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“Scaling the business remains our priority. Access to money is what the business needed. We have a shareholder that understands the telco landscape and we will get huge value from Vodafone, which has done well in Portugal and the Spanish fibre markets.
“We’ve committed to connecting one million homes and we are going to build at scale and make sure that 50 000 homes a month are passed with fibre. We are getting some capital in and some transfer assets from Vodacom. After the merger, Maziv will gain more than 5 000km of metro fibre and the infrastructure that passes 160 000 homes from Vodacom,” noted Mare.
“Vodacom is contributing all of its metro fibre-to-the-street and fibre-to-the-home assets to Maziv as part of the transaction. We will create an open access model, which is in line with our principle.”
According to Mare, out of the 12 million underserved or unconnected homes in SA, seven million are estimated to have some form of poor-quality connectivity. Of those, 1.4 million homes are overbuild (overlapped by many operators).
Maziv Group CEO Dietlof Mare.
Another priority area Maziv is looking at is connecting more than 8 000 cellular base stations across the country, which are not already connected to fibre infrastructure, he stated.
Through its DFA subsidiary, the company is looking to collaborate with key players in the mobile network industry to deploy broadband infrastructure on mobile sites which currently don’t have high-speed fibre.
SA still has 27 000 mobile sites, of which about 9 000 are only connected via microwave, he pointed out.
“We have to get those sites connected to fibre. We can play a role in creating mechanisms to get to those sites, for all mobile network operators. This would ensure mobile network operators do not rely on slower microwave backhaul to connect remote towers.”
Maziv was created in 2022 by Remgro-owned Community Investment Ventures Holdings after it folded Vumatel and DFA into one giant fibre infrastructure company.
The company initially focused on SA’s metropolitan areas, and from 2018, started shifting to less affluent areas and township areas, with the introduction of its prepaid offering.
According to Mare, internet service providers (ISPs) remain an important part of the business and Vuma and DFA have over the years grown their ISP partners, with Vuma notching up a network of over 75 ISP partners, to date.
“As we move away from the core areas into the lower LSM areas, the business model changes. As we go into the ‘under R5 000 income a month’ homes it becomes a different model – an open access model.
“I believe we can still do it on open access. The most important thing is how we get fibre to every home in SA. It must be built around uncapped – which is data in abundance. In the previously disadvantaged areas, the service has to be better than the Sandtons and Parkhursts because these are highly dense areas.
“Disposable income is not in abundance in the previously disadvantaged areas because they have to choose carefully where they invest their money. So, the quality of the network is critical. Good quality is going to be the differentiator and that costs money.”
Mare noted that Maziv, through its subsidiaries, has since inception seen its fibre network pass over 4.5 million homes in SA, with more than 25 000 commercial buildings connected so far through its fibre-to-the-business network.
“This deal [with Vodacom] will change South Africa and it will create the connectivity level which SA needs. We are set up for great things to come. Vodacom understands this is a capital-intensive business and it has a different view on investing capital and it has an appetite for taking a bit of a risk,” he concluded.
