Openserve, the wholesale networks subsidiary of Telkom has grown the number of homes passed with its own fibre broadband infrastructure to 1.1 million. This, Telkom said in a quarterly financial update on Monday, means that as of end-June, Openserve has been able to pass the milestone of half a million homes connected with fibre.

The connectivity rate for Openserve fibre remains relatively high, too, at 46.5% — meaning that nearly half of homes passed with the company’s fibre have elected to sign up for its services.

In March, Telkom said it had hired Bank of America to manage the sale of a stake in Openserve. Fixed-data next-generation revenue – in other words, revenue not tied to legacy copper networks, for example – rose by 10.6%, driven by growth in broadband. The next-gen network portfolio now contributes 73.7% to Openserve’s revenue.

“The increase in demand for connectivity and consumption continues to reflect on the fixed-data traffic increase of 13.3% to 512PB,” Telkom said. “However, the accelerated decline in total fixed voice revenue of 29% remains a challenge, and resulted in an overall revenue decline of 2.7% for the quarter to R3.1-billion.”

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Load shedding also impacted Openserve, with diesel costs in the quarter reaching a staggering R88-million and negatively impacting Ebitda, a measure of operating profit, where the margin fell to 28%, a reduction of 1.9 percentage points from a year ago.

In March, Telkom said it had hired Bank of America to manage the sale of a stake in Openserve, a process that may elicit interest from Telkom rival MTN Group and others. 

MTN last year previously engaged in early-stage talks to buy the entirety of Telkom, a deal that would have been complicated to get over the line. Those talks broke down, however, after Telkom engaged wireless broadband upstart Rain in separate negotiations. Those talks led nowhere. 

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry