Merweville is digging its own fibre

One trench, 486 households, finished by December.

Back the build

R812 400

pledged of R1.2 million

486

households signed

14 km

trenched to date

23

days to go

We dig it ourselves

Nine of us, two TLBs and a rock saw the municipality is not using this month. Labour is the biggest line on any fibre build and we have taken it out of the costing.

Duct and drum delivered to town

The 20mm microduct and the 48-core drums come down on the Beaufort West run every second Thursday and live in the old co-op shed on Voortrekker.

Uplink to Beaufort West

A 10 Gbps wireless hop off the water tower to the Beaufort West exchange, 96 km north. That hop is bought and paid for. It is the trench that still needs money.

Every household on the same line

One price inside the village boundary, Sonskyn included. No premium package, no quietly throttling the far end of the street.

Why we are not waiting

Merweville has been on a list since 2016. Twice a year somebody drives through, photographs the water tower, asks about household numbers, and the list stays a list. Three hundred kilometres of gravel between us and the nearest fibre ring is a bad business case, and we have stopped arguing with the arithmetic.

So we costed it ourselves. A trench is only a trench: a machine, a wayleave, duct, cable, a splicer, and people willing to work in the sun. Between the school, the clinic, four guesthouses and every farm office filing to SARS off a phone hotspot, this village already spends more on data in eighteen months than the whole build costs once.

The money does not buy a company. It buys fourteen kilometres of duct in the ground, and the line stays with the Merweville Gemeenskapsnetwerk NPC, which is all of us.

The trench down the main road

Voortrekker Street runs 1.9 kilometres from the police station to the last house past the dam wall, and it is the spine of the build. Every side street splices into it. We cut 600mm on the verge, outside the storm-water line, on a wayleave the municipality stamped on 4 March. The copy is in the shed if anybody wants to read it. What it costs: R41 a metre for duct, bedding sand and reinstatement. R118 000 for the 48-core backbone. R64 000 for the splicing contractor from Oudtshoorn who does the joints we cannot do properly ourselves. What it does not cost: nothing for the digging, nothing for the plant, nothing for a project manager. Marius writes up the site book at night after the shop closes and the week's figures go on the noticeboard at the general dealer every Friday.

The four phases

Trench. 600mm along the verge of Voortrekker, then the eleven side streets. Two TLBs, hand tools where the water pipes run shallow, and every metre reinstated the same week we open it.
Blow. Microduct into the trench, then fibre blown through on a compressor. About 900 metres a day once a duct run is clean and joined.
Splice. The backbone jointed at nine points, then a drop and a connector at every erf that has signed. This is the one phase we pay a contractor for, and it is the one phase you cannot rush.
Light. The hop off the water tower comes up, the router in the shed comes up, and the street is on. Kerkstraat was the first, tested on 2 August, and it has not dropped since.

Sign your household up

Add my erf

From the town

I take guesthouse bookings on the stoep because that is the only place with a bar. Six of them went to Prince Albert last winter because I answered two days late.

Elmien Saayman · Karoo Rus Gastehuis

Bloods go to Beaufort West by taxi. On a line the results come back the same afternoon instead of the next week.

Sr Nomvula Mgidi · Merweville Clinic

My matrics did their whole university application on my personal data. I am a teacher, not a hotspot.

Willem Cloete · Laerskool Merweville

I put in R500 and dug four Saturdays. My street is already on, so I got the better end of that arrangement.

Johannes Windvogel · Kerkstraat

Who is behind it

Merweville Gemeenskapsnetwerk NPC
Beaufort West Munisipaliteit
Merweville Boere-unie
Laerskool Merweville
Oudtshoorn Fibre Splicing
Karoo Rus Gastehuis