Fibre infrastructure company DFA is nearing completion of the first phase of its national network upgrade and future-proofing project, which started in 2023 and has cost more than R800-million to date.

The group has been installing new services and migrating existing customer services onto the upgraded infrastructure since July.

“While we have experienced challenges as a result of increased service interruptions and some infrastructure fatigue in recent years, this ongoing investment represents a fundamental redesign of our network architecture that will enable vastly improved connectivity in an increasingly complex digital world,” says DFA parent company Maziv chief operations officer Dewald Booysen.

Between 2022 and 2023, DFA experienced several network incidents, mostly affecting customers in parts of Gauteng, where the company started the network upgrade strategy as the province represented the highest density of infrastructure for DFA’s network.

DFA structured the rollout in three phases. Phase 1 focused on Gauteng, with the migration of existing services continuing over the next 12 to 24 months.

Phase 2 extends into the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal over the following year, while Phase 3 will cover the rest of the national network over two to three years, ensuring consistent long-term performance as demand continues to grow.

“The speed of artificial intelligence adoption, convergence of technologies and a change in customer demands have necessitated an innovative pivot away from traditional network designs,” explains Booysen, noting that the pace of change in how businesses use technology requires more capacity and speed to market as well as a “rethink” of the network architecture itself.

The first major phase of investment was a R400-million Dry Underground Distribution Cabinet deployment, in August 2023, to support higher fibre volumes linked to access services – both dark and managed – faster service delivery and improved resilience.

This laid the groundwork for DFA’s national network modernisation and upgrade programme.

DFA has also simultaneously invested in digital automation, improved incident management and partner consolidation to increase operational efficiency, reduce fault-to-circuit ratios and quicken service delivery.

One of the key drives for the business was the implementation of greater incident management efficiency, with upgraded digital systems providing real-time reporting on incidents and fault maintenance, and greater accuracy in providing mean time to repair and service restoration commitments.

“To achieve this, we also kicked off a partner and contractor consolidation drive, improving accountability and consistency in customer experience. Together with automation at the Network Operations Centre, this helped us improve our response to daily network incidents,” Booysen says.