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MTN gets fibre route connecting Pretoria, Polokwane

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 24 Feb 2016
MTN says it will continue to be aggressive in exploring opportunities for deploying its network, be it terrestrial, fibre or undersea.
MTN says it will continue to be aggressive in exploring opportunities for deploying its network, be it terrestrial, fibre or undersea.

MTN has acquired almost 400km of fibre from Liquid Telecom for an undisclosed sum. The deal involves both long-distance and metro fibres connecting Pretoria and Polokwane.

The operator says the deal is a significant milestone in its self-provisioning strategy and its plans to build its own transmission network for high-speed connectivity.

"Once MTN's national long-distance transmission network is completed, it will offer significantly larger bandwidth which will considerably increase data transfer speeds for all users, offer lower latency and improved network resilience," says Devan Chetty, MTN South Africa GM.

"This acquisition nudges us closer towards the attainment of our vision of leading the delivery of a bold, new digital world."

The route forms part of the national long-distance fibre network, a consortium-led initiative that saw a number of operators in partnership with the South African National Road Agency trench thousands of kilometres across the country to deploy a terrestrial fibre network connecting Gauteng to both Cape Town and Durban.

MTN says this particular fibre-optic route, between Pretoria and Polokwane, supports many hundreds of Gbps of traffic and is scalable to meet MTN's future requirements.

Chetty says MTN will continue to be aggressive in exploring opportunities for deploying its network, be it terrestrial, fibre or undersea.

Last year, MTN announced it had joined the African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable consortium, making it the only operator in South Africa to be part of ACE, which is planned to connect 23 countries.

MTN says its current priority is to connect Cape Town to Durban via East London. This will further enhance the telco's national transmission network and reduce its operational expenditure for capacity from third-party suppliers.

It will also provide full end-to-end resilience for transmission connectivity to and between all of the undersea cable systems which land on both the East and West coastlines.

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