The City of Cape Town has entered into eight third-party service provider agreements licensing the take up of the spare infrastructure capacity generated through the city’s broadband network.

Lease-agreement negotiations were progressing with another 20 third-party network operators, including some of the country's larger telecommunications companies.

“The fibre-optic network has reached the point where it is robust and extensive enough to be leveraged off by the private sector,” the city said in a statement.

Last mile connections to commercial buildings were currently under way, allowing businesses to use high-speed telecommunications networks for access to converged services and faster, cheaper and more reliable Internet connectivity.

“Smaller operators are also able to use the same infrastructure to enter the market, generating competition in the Internet service provider sector and stimulating economic growth in the Western Cape private sector as a whole,” the city added.

To date, the broadband network had saved the city R117-million in costs – avoiding R47.6-million in telecommunications and R70-million in bandwidth costs for the 2013/2014 financial year.

The network had also boosted the city’s internal Internet speed by 3 000 times, with 43 Western Cape government buildings and 141 city buildings currently connected.