Herotel brings 10Gbps-capable fibre to South African townships, with 3,000 customers already connected and 1 million homes to follow

PARTNER CONTENT Herotel is bringing 10Gbps-capable fibre internet to Jouberton, Kanana and Siyabuswa, three township communities in South Africa where fibre connectivity did not previously exist. More than 3,000 customers are already live on the network, with subscriber numbers continuing to grow.

For these communities, fibre has until now been out of reach, leaving residents and schools dependent on more expensive, lower-capacity alternatives. Herotel’s deployment changes that, and Jouberton, Kanana and Siyabuswa are the first three communities to go live under the programme.

XGS-PON is a fibre access technology designed for symmetrical 10Gbps-capable performance and long-term scalability. The higher capacity matters beyond headline speeds: schools in these communities can now access bandwidth-intensive learning platforms, video, and cloud-based tools that were previously impractical. For households and local businesses, it means a network that can keep pace as more devices connect and digital services become more central to daily life.

The deployment uses XGS-PON equipment supplied by ZTE, chosen for its proven performance in high-density access environments and the long-term scalability it offers as Herotel extends the programme to more communities.

Van Zyl Botha, CEO of Herotel

“Our focus has always been the communities that were left behind. Bringing XGS-PON into Jouberton, Kanana and Siyabuswa is the next step in that mission. This is about building infrastructure that supports real opportunity for families, schools and local businesses.” Estiaan Ferreira, Chief Business Development Officer at Herotel “What excites me most is not just what this network delivers today, but what it makes possible tomorrow. A 10Gbps-capable platform gives us the foundation to introduce services that simply were not viable on lower-capacity infrastructure, including richer entertainment, connected health, smart home services, and solutions for small businesses that need reliable, high-speed connectivity to grow. These three communities are the starting point. As we scale this to the next million homes, the commercial and social opportunity becomes significant.”

Coert Smit, CTO at Herotel

“XGS-PON is the right foundation for what we are building. Not infrastructure that is only good enough for today, but infrastructure that can carry these communities into the next decade. With the right access platform and strong partners like ZTE, we can continue improving customer experience and long-term network capability.”

Luca Shen, CEO of ZTE South Africa

“Connecting communities that have been underserved by digital infrastructure is exactly the kind of work we want to be part of. We are proud to support Herotel on this deployment and look forward to being part of their expansion as demand in these communities continues to grow.”

What this means for communities, schools and businesses

• Schools gain access to the bandwidth needed for modern digital learning. Video-based education, cloud platforms, and online resources that were out of reach on lower-capacity connections are now available.
• Families and households can connect multiple devices simultaneously without degraded performance, enabling remote work, streaming, and connected services at home.
• Township communities gain access to the same quality of broadband infrastructure as South Africa’s major cities, narrowing a connectivity gap that has persisted for decades.
• The 10Gbps-capable platform provides headroom for years of demand growth. These communities will not need to be re-connected as bandwidth needs increase.

Herotel Business: enterprise-grade connectivity in communities that have never had it

The same infrastructure that connects township households also opens the door to a new tier of business services through Herotel Business. For the first time, small and medium enterprises operating in these communities can access dedicated connectivity backed by formal service level agreements, without having to be located in a metropolitan area to qualify for it.

For larger enterprises with operations or branches in these areas, the XGS-PON platform enables Herotel Business to deliver managed services including SD-WAN and cloud connectivity at the same standard available in Sandton or Cape Town. Businesses can connect distributed branches over a single managed network, with the performance and reliability that enterprise operations require, regardless of where those branches are located.

As Herotel extends this infrastructure to the next million homes, the commercial opportunity for businesses operating in or expanding into township markets grows with it. The network that serves a household on one street can serve an enterprise branch on the next.

Herotel says these three deployments mark the beginning, not the scale. The programme is designed to extend the same future-ready fibre infrastructure to the next million homes across South Africa’s townships and underserved communities.

Contributed by ZTE.