Estate Living Magazine Alfresco Living - Issue 36 December 2018 | Page 59

MY ESTATE HAS FIBRE -
WHY SHOULD I CONNECT?
So you’ve put up with the trenches being dug, and now
there’s fibre in your estate, but – really – what’s the big deal?
Actually, a lot. Fibre will change your life.
• Uncapped data, at prices you can’t believe, means no
more family fights – and at speeds that will blow your ears
back (never mind your hair).
• With fibre, a home office is every bit as effective and
efficient as being ‘on the shop floor’.
• Streaming from multiple devices will mean you really and
truly decide what you want to watch, and when you want
to watch it.
• Live gaming for all the kids in your family – even the grey-
haired ones.
• And, last but not least, fibre will enhance any security
features you have in your home.
‘That presents an opportunity for fibre operators,’ he added. ‘They
prefer to go into a safe, more concentrated and better defined
residential environment at first, and then into office parks. That will
also prompt other fibre operators who are targeting those, and that
will lead to the faster growth of fibre infrastructure. ’This approach
– fibre to the home first, fibre to the business second – challenges
the popular perception of who’s using fibre-enabled high-speed
internet, and why. Rather than a high-powered business exec using
But remember, fibre is the backbone to your home network,
and you are still dependent on wireless routers for coverage.
So, if you are not receiving consistant signal throughout the
home, especially if you have a big house on many levels, you
may need to upgrade your wireless routers.
MTN Supersonic now offers an easy online connect system,
and an innovative product called Supersonic Smart Wi-Fi.
This consists of multiple connecters that adapt to your space
and lifestyle. It’s easy to set up, and you can control it through
your smartphone.
Let the games begin!
broadband access to run seamless Skype calls while a fleet of robots
applies machine learning to process vast amounts of big data, South Africa. But, like the technological leaps we took from 2016 to
shouldn’t that picture rather be of a young person relaxing at home, 2018, it’s quite likely that in three years’ time 5G will be far more –
casting a Netflix show to the TV screen while chatting to their friend and far more ubiquitous – than merely an expensive, early-adapter
via WhatsApp on their phone about the Spotify playlist they’ve been technology.
streaming on their laptop?
‘I think that 5G is really going to change the way that consumers
Given the rapid changes in streaming entertainment and OTT consume data,’ Simon Harvey, CEO at FibreCo Telecommunications,
messaging, the market trends and studies certainly seem to told the FTTX Council Africa Conference. ‘Taking away the
suggest so. They also suggest that, whatever those millennials enterprise for a moment, I do think that there are going to be
are talking about, they’re more likely to be using pictures than different applications and different requirements for data, and data
words. A new study by TechSmith, surveying 4,500 office workers [demand] is going to grow significantly.’ Harvey expects to see
across six regions, found that more than 64% of millennials say they many more 5G antennae and much more fibre deployment in the
understand information faster when it’s communicated visually, with coming years, with the drive for both coming from consumers. And
58% adding that they remember information for longer if it has been if Africa Analysis’s Dobek Pater is right, the first place you’ll see that
communicated visually. is in residential estates.
Those visual messages require data to transmit digitally. And that’s 5G is enabled by – and, to a large extent, carried by – fibre, so the
where fibre and 5G come into the picture. two will go hand in hand. If you’re not sure how that works, ask a
millennial to explain it. Just don’t be surprised if they send you a
5G technology, which provides fibre-like levels of data speed and
capacity over a mobile network, is currently in its earliest stages in
picture via WhatsApp.
Mark van Dijk
estate-living.co.za
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