This is how much FTTH actually costs your suburb

MyGaming recently ran an article about how South African ISPs choose which suburbs can receive fibre-to-the-home services.

With answers ranging from demographics to infrastructure, the one topic that kept cropping up were the costs involved.

We asked Laurie Fialkov of CyberSmart and Abraham van der Merwe of Frogfoot (Division of VOX responsible for Fibre development) just how much FTTH is costing you and your suburb.

Laurie Fialkov – CyberSmart

You are looking about R700 per metre to get the fibre to the house and lit all the way back to the aggregation node.

This includes the cost of your customer premises equipment ( which can be any number depending on your installation), the rental at your aggregation point etc.

Abraham van der Merwe – Frogfoot

Costs are heavily dependent on a number of factors, such as:

a) method of deployment (e.g. aerial fibre deployment would be signficantly lower cost than conventional trenching, etc) this in turn is governed by factors such as what council would allow, what the community would support, etc.

b) geographical density (e.g. cost per home connected would obviously differ vastly in an area with lots of multi dwelling units vs large free standing erfs, etc)

c) infrastructure requirements (i.e. each service provider has different views/requirements on what current and future network requirements in an area would be which in turn informs their technology choices and costings).

Do you have FTTH in your suburb? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.