Van Zyl Botha on connecting the unconnected through fibre expansion

Fibre expansion in South Africa's secondary towns is transforming communities. Van Zyl Botha, co-founder and CEO of the Herotel Group, joins Aki Anastasiou to discuss bridging the digital divide outside major metros. Botha details how the network operator evolved from consolidating local wireless ISPs into an infrastructure powerhouse deploying high-speed fibre across 180 municipalities. The conversation covers Herotel’s vertically integrated model, explaining how handling infrastructure construction, installations, and ISP operations internally removes the middleman to lower costs and boost uptime. Botha highlights localized innovations like their flexible 7-day voucher payment systems tailored to the township economy, alongside their redundant "Super Core" data centers that dramatically lower latency for regional users. Finally, he unpacks the business impact of their landmark acquisition by Maziv-aligning them with Vumatel and DFA-and how this partnership scales up operations to bring uncapped broadband to seven million unconnected homes. 0:00 Intro 1:30 Solving the digital divide outside SA metros 5:30 Evolving from local WISPs to national fibre infrastructure 17:40 Why vertical integration beats the traditional ISP model 21:30 Innovations for the township economy: vouchers and aerial fibre 28:00 The Maziv acquisition and scaling to a million homes 36:50 Unpacking the network's redundant "Super Core" secret sauce Follow MyBroadband: X - https://twitter.com/mybroadband Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mybroadband Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mybroadband/ Website - https://mybroadband.co.za/news/ #FibreInternet #BroadbandSA #WhatsNext