There’s a Frost & Sullivan report, produced for SqwidNet, that says South Africa has around 6.1 million manhole covers that are used by telecommunications companies and municipalities. These round, solid plates protect people, animals and detritus from falling down holes in an authorised manner and provide access to underground areas for maintenance, repair or upgrade purposes. Often, these covers are stolen or they go missing, which puts people and animals at risk. According to Johannesburg’s mayor Herman Mashaba, there were around 104 manhole-related deaths in 2017/2018 – that’s one person dying every three days because of a missing manhole cover. This was not a risk that Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) was interested in taking, especially when the company has a significant portfolio of manhole operations across the country.

DFA owns around 35 000 manholes that form part of its terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure, providing protection for critical network junctions and access points for maintenance teams. A fair number of these manholes have been fitted with electronic access systems, but they only detect when a manhole has been opened by an unauthorised person. It was determined that there was a need for an additional solution that would provide more in-depth alerts if the cover was forcefully breached.