iBurst growth stunted by site shortage

MD Alan Knott-Craig Jr says demand for base station landing sites has pushed rental prices up unrealistically and this is curtailing the company`s ability to roll out base stations as fast as it is signing up subscribers.

The company currently has 35 000 broadband subscribers [7% market share] and plans to double its subscriber base to 70 000 by the end of the year, he says.

iBurst already has 128 live base stations across the country, which it aims to have almost doubled to 250 stations when its proposed capital expansion plan is completed by February 2008.

Knott-Craig says iBurst is planning to roll out 10 to 15 base stations per month to provide wider national coverage, as well as ensuring that the network infrastructure can cope with increased subscriber demands. The limit on the number of base stations being rolled out is not because of financial constraints, Knott-Craig claims, alluding to the R350 million that the company has secured to fund its network expansion.

Knott-Craig says negotiating a fair rate with owners whose property has potential to serve as a base station is a strong challenge.

Property owners have become aware that their properties are in demand and have begun charging a premium for them, sometimes asking as much as double what would be a reasonable fee, he says. Also, big operators such as MTN and Vodacom have already signed up long-term leases for many of the potential base station locations, Knott-Craig adds.

Sentech has also said that securing elevated sites to build base stations is a problem. New entrants, if there are new entrants, will also have the same problem, says MyADSL founder Rudolph Muller.