The message at this year's FTTX Conference was clear, high speed fibre broadband is crucial to enable economic growth in Africa and to ensure an improved quality of life for everyone. Interest in the event has grown to such an extent that the organisers decided to host the function at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, for the first time.

Tank Industries exhibited our growing range of Telecom products, developed to enable the deployment of fibre networks. Our product range now includes fibre optic closures, Uniracks for patching and splicing, boundary boxes, cable coil boxes, ducts, connectors, fibre optic cable and various accessories.

We have definitely experienced a growing interest in our products as well as an urgency amongst operators and installers to accelerate their rollout. With around one million homes connected to fibre to date, the race is on to see who will connect the biggest number of households by 2020.

While many sectors of our economy is contracting, the aggressive rollout of fibre to the premises presents many opportunities for companies such as Tank Industries.

The information sessions at this year's conference provided new insights into the applications of broadband made possible by fibre connections, ranging from fast links for large businesses, enabling advanced medical services, closing the digital divide between schools across all demographics to enabling smart homes and a growing work-from-home industry.

With the growing demand for bandwidth, fibre cannot be deployed quickly enough. Fibre is but an embryo in Africa, there is an exciting time ahead and we are focussing our efforts on developing and providing leading FTTX solutions to our current and future customers.