Frogfoot’s road to success – MyBroadband

Fibre network operator (FNO) Frogfoot punches well above its weight in a market dominated by big players like Vumatel and Openserve, with fibre users in South Africa recognising it as offering great value for money.

The local company has a 19-year history and currently offers fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) products in most of South Africa’s major metros and surrounding areas.

According to the latest reported figures from September 2023, Frogfoot’s FTTH network had passed 361,000 homes, placing it fifth overall in terms of homes passed.

By that date, it had also connected 151,000 homes to its network, giving it one of the highest connection ratios in the country at 41.83%.

For reference, only Openserve has a higher connection ratio at 48.97%, with nearly 1.26 million homes passed and 591,000 connected as of March 2024.

Vumatel — the country’s largest FNO — had a connection ratio of 33.2% as of August 2023, with two million homes passed and an estimated 664,000 homes connected.

A recent survey conducted by Analytico revealed that South African fibre users find Frogfoot to offer great value for money. 14% of respondents associate it with offering the best value for money, putting it just behind Vumatel.

Frogfoot is a much smaller FNO than Openserve and Vumatel, which shows that it has an effective marketing strategy to communicate its value to consumers.

In April 2023, the FNO appointed Shane Chorley as its CEO, replacing Abraham van der Merwe, the outgoing CEO and founder of Frogfoot Networks. Van der Merwe now serves as chief strategy officer at parent company Viviva.

Chorley emphasised the company’s focus on upgrading its network and service experience for customers. This includes improving uptime and overall user experience.

He said that, over the past year, the FNO had deployed a national long-distance fibre network and invested significantly into improving the uptime of nodes on its own networks and its partners during power outages.

“Key plans going forward include constantly growing our fibre footprint to deliver more value to our customers, expanding our network into townships to try and get fibre to all and extending our product offering to add Fibre To The Tower (FTTT),” said Chorley.

“It is critical we build a business that is known for its customer service, uptime and ability to deliver value to our customers.”

Plans to shake up the fibre industry

In January 2024, Frogfoot revealed that it was considering offering a wider range of prepaid FTTH products to residents in higher-income areas.

Generally, prepaid fibre products are targeted at less-affluent communities in the country.

Frogfoot chief product officer David Coleman told MyBroadband that even customers in high-income areas can benefit from prepaid fibre services.

“The need for on-demand services is not limited to lower [Living Standards Measure] areas,” he said.

For reference, the Living Standard Measure (LSM) is a tool used by market researchers in South Africa to provide more refined metrics for socio-economic class, with a scale ranging from 1 to 10 and a higher number suggesting greater access to wealth.

“There is a need for a product that delivers stable and accessible connectivity that’s priced to fit the needs of the market and designed to overcome the challenges of local infrastructure,” stated Coleman.

“One of the core needs of the LSM 8–10 market is for connectivity to be cost-effective. They want the reliability and security of fibre but without the hefty price tag.”

He explained that these customers could benefit from prepaid fibre connectivity in various use cases.

“Holidaymakers wanting a reliable connectivity experience can use a prepaid service to stay connected and those who offer holiday services can use prepaid or monthly fibre solutions to offer this connectivity as a value-added service to their customers,” said Coleman.

“Students and people living in retirement communities can now gain access to affordable connectivity that fits within their individual budgets.”

These customers can pay for fibre services when they need it, with the products providing reliable fibre connectivity to meet their requirements.