Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) was established by Community Investment Ventures (CIV) and Venfin to build a carrier neutral, dark fibre infrastructure for the transmission of metro and long haul telecommunications traffic. What is Dark Fibre? "Dark fibre" can be described as an optical fibre infrastructure which has been installed but is not being used. "Dark fibre" refers to unlit optical fibre. Fibre optic cable is the medium through which transmission equipment transmits data via light forms. As there is no light being transmitted in dark fibre it can be described as being "unlit". Dark fibre affords telecommunications operators the choice of selecting the technology of their choice,whether that be SDH, ATM, Ethernet of fibre channel, without having to incur the massive up front capital expenditure of constructing the entire network infrastructure or having to rent an expensive managed service from an operator that may also be a competitor. The main benefits of dark fibre lie in its cost, capacity and speed of execution advantages. Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) Dark fibre is new to the South African market, which until 2006, had only one licensed provider of fixed line telecommunications services. With the advent of a deregulated telecommunications environment, new licensed operators began to commission their own network infrastructures. Since the routes on which these networks will be constructed are typically in centres with the highest commercial and population concentration there is a high level of overlap. In the construction of fibre optic transmission networks, civil engineering infrastructure and ducting account for 70 to 80% of total costs, but deliver no strategi