• DFA has invested R800 million in improving its network infrastructure across South Africa.
• The improvements include improved fibre internet line speeds and greater capacity on its network.
• The DFA network spans 15 000km throughout South Africa.

As part of its drive to improve and prepare its network for the future, DFA has announced a massive investment into its infrastructure.

The company, part of the MAZIV group, announced today that it was investing R800 million into its national network. This network delivers connectivity and backhaul for mobile operators, data centres, internet service providers and the public sector.

The investment has already lead to a 40 percent improvement in new circuit delivery times and 100 percent improvement in mean time to repair.

“We have improved the average number of new circuits delivered from 800 to 1 500 per month. In one month, we delivered nearly 2 000 new connections – a record for us. We’re also enabling higher line speeds and increasing available capacity to meet the changing needs of our customers,” says Andreas Uys, chief technology officer for MAZIV.

“With the new architecture supported by a recently consolidated PMO [project management office] office, we are very focused on reducing delivery times while driving high-quality service. Our target this year is to deliver up to 2 500 connections per month,” Uys adds. “We could potentially deliver fibre connectivity to buildings already on our network within 14 days, and to non-connected buildings within 55 days. These upgrades and changes in our PMO are critical to meeting the increasing demand for fast, stable internet services.”

DFA says that it has been working hard to address customer complaints about network instability in 2022. Since then, DFA has worked to achieve a national uptime of 99.5 percent even when there are an influx of incidents. The modernisation of the network also assists in the turnaround time for repairs when force majeure events occur on the network.

The company says that its mean time to repair has improved by 100 percent in the last 12 months, an impressive feat when you are maintaining over 15 000km of network infrastructure.

“We are seeing consistent and predictable improvements month on month,” says Dewald Booysen, chief operations officer at MAZIV. “We have drastically improved the time taken to repair customer faults while simultaneously delivering new circuits, conducting ongoing maintenance, and deploying new network architecture.”

DFA and MAZIV say that part of the upgrade was directly aimed at improving customer service. This is accomplished through dedicated service management points of contact for customers has proven to be vital in improving its network. In addition, a Project Office improves delivery timelines, the partner programme has been improved and the Network Operations Centre has seen significant upgrades.

“The new service management initiatives improve customer service and provide customers with a single point of contact for new services and support, while automation and revised business processes within the NOC ensure transparency and proactive communication with customers,” says Booysen.

Hopefully, the investment into its network helps DFA and MAZIV service its partners and customers with more efficiency and that there are fewer outages and problems. Even if there are problems though, it seems as if the network can be easily repaired and maintained which bodes well for the future.