Alexandra sits beside Sandton, the richest square mile in Africa. Khayelitsha stretches across the Cape Flats, 1,400km away. Kwa-Thema lies on the East Rand, one of South Africa’s oldest townships. They’ve never met, but for three years they’ve told chapters of the same story: what it takes to bring fibre to the communities that need it most — and keep it there.
Alexandra proved it could be done. Khayelitsha proved it could survive. Kwa-Thema proved you can go back for what was left behind.
Alexandra: the proving ground
Before fibre, Alexandra ran entirely on capped, expensive mobile data. Then came Vuma Key, trialled in Alex and Kayamandi, Stellenbosch: uncapped fibre for around R99 a month, roughly R3.30 a day.
It launched commercially in September 2024 across wards 75, 76, 107, 108 and 116: 10Mbps uncapped, free installation, no
contract, no credit check, built for households earning under R5,000 a month.
The bigger win was who the network created: residents became resellers and distributors, landlords bundled fibre into rent, and by late 2025 a Vuma-YouTube partnership had equipped 2,000 households with free streaming devices.
Behind the showcase sits unglamorous daily work – technicians climbing poles, splicing aerial fibre, fixing faults fast, because in a prepaid township, downtime is money already spent.
Khayelitsha: the comeback
Khayelitsha’s fibre arrived through Vuma Reach and thrived. By 2023, Vumatel had passed two million homes nationally, half in underserved communities like Khayelitsha, Soweto and Umlazi.
Then extortion syndicates targeted contractors. Operations paused for over nine months, and in late 2024 Vumatel withdrew
altogether.
In August 2025, the team returned. Not with a security convoy, but a conversation: how does the community become part of the network? They trained local leaders in running a business. Pricing, quoting, managing money and clients. In February
2026, rehabilitation began, restoring what months of neglect had broken, then kept going: rehabilitation into installations, installations into maintenance.
One lesson, three townships
Alexandra thrived because the community was inside the value chain from day one. Khayelitsha nearly died until it got a genuine stake. Kwa-Thema fell to an approach, not a place.
South Africa tends to treat infrastructure risk as a security problem. Guards, escorts, hardened enclosures. These townships suggest the real variable is belonging: security spend buys time; a stake in the network buys a future.
In February 2026, Vumatel passed one million subscribers nationally. Half of them in townships.
Tonight, in three townships across two provinces, a learner does homework online, a small business trades beyond its street, and a family stops rationing data. The glass in the ground is the same everywhere. What makes it a network is the people around it.
New Planet Energy proudly sits at the forefront of bringing equal fibre opportunity across the nation. Supplying, installing, and maintaining commercial and residential fibre networks with sustainability at our core. We provide last-mile home installations, full project builds, surveying and core network installations across South Africa.
