Dark Fibre Africa to acquire Conduct

Reshaad Sha, chief strategy officer of DFA

Conduct is a last-mile fibre solutions provider offering an open-access network to service providers, so allowing them to deliver high-speed voice, video and data solutions. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of March, pending the necessary approvals.

Reshaad Sha, chief strategy officer of DFA, noted: "The Conduct acquisition gives us an overnight presence as a last-mile provider and, importantly, puts into motion our strategy to connect as many customers to our fibre network as possible in a cost-effective way."

Sha noted that DFA has identified a largely unmet need in the market for cost-effective fibre connectivity to enterprise customers. The cost of building out the last mile from an existing network into the building has been a barrier to entry to fibre connectivity for many enterprises, he said.

"Our customers, being Internet Service Providers and telecoms operators, therefore require an underlying solution that accelerates business connectivity more economically," he said. "DFA has focused its efforts on building a product set to lower or remove, this barrier to entry."

Instant access to new customers

Johan Pretorius, CEO of Conduct, noted: "Conduct's last-mile network enables enterprises to get access to fibre very rapidly. Combining this last-mile infrastructure with DFA's metro network provides ISPs instant access to new customers whilst businesses benefit from fibre. Suddenly there are fast, reliable, competitive services at their fingertips."

DFA expects its last-mile strategy to be significantly enhanced with the acquisition of Conduct, allowing it to further speed up the delivery of last-mile fibre connectivity to its customers while maintaining the successful recipe that Conduct has developed over the last two years. DFA, through its ISP partner network, aims to connect up to 10 000 business customers to its fibre network by March 2015.

DFA will make all the capital investments required to build out this last-mile fibre network where it currently has a metro network presence across South Africa.