[Update] POTRAZ Grants Internet Access Provider DFA Licence To Operate Locally

In March 2019, Dark Fibre Africa announced they were setting up offices locally as part of its expansion into markets outside of South Africa. This was followed up by the Internet Access Provider laying down infrastructure in parts of the CBD.

Now the company has announced that they have been granted a Class B licence to operate in the Zimbabwean market following a successful launch and proof of concept phase.

At the moment this makes DFA only the second IAP in the Class B category with Liquid, TelOne & Dandemutande being the Class A licence holders. I tried checking the POTRAZ site to see what the difference between the two licences is and I couldn’t find the information. I’ve reached out to POTRAZ reps to get a better understand of how that works and will update this article.

Update: Class A licenses allows an Internet Access Provider to sell international bandwidth and provide other services like VoIP and Video whilst Class B licence only allows for basic internet access provision.

We look forward to partnering with our targeted customer base to enhance their efficiency and competitiveness. By fulfilling their physical fibre-network-infrastructure requirements and taking on the maintenance responsibilities, we enable them to focus on their core business of providing excellent value-added telecommunication services to their customers.

Simon Chimutsotso – Chief Executive Officer of DFA Zimbabwe

DFA touts its open access model as being attractive since access is made available to multiple Internet Service Providers on equal terms.

There are questions that the press communications by DFA don’t answer yet. One of the biggest question I have is how the access provider will avoid the same challenges being currently faced by TelOne and ZOL who have attributed the deterioration of service to current economic challenges.

We also found it fascinating that DFA started laying down infrastructure a year ago but only announced that they got a licence to operate this month. So did they lay down infrastructure before getting licencing? We posed these and other questions to DFA reps and are waiting on their response.