The joint terrestrial fibre grid being built by MTN, Vodacom, Neotel and the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) has seen headway with the lighting up of a route between Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
MTN yesterday revealed that the National Long Distance (NLD) consortium - made up of the three local telecoms competitors and SA's road agency - has lit the fibre-optic route from Germiston to Durban.
This follows an announcement in July last year, in which the group said the trenching of close on 700km of fibre-optic cable had been successfully completed.
MTN CTO Kanagaratnam Lambotharan says the project marks a significant milestone in MTN's "self-provisioning strategy". MTN is in control of the transmission system used on the route.
The system, which is scalable, currently supports 400Gbps of traffic.
Tipping point
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says the development is part of a number of advancements SA will see this year that will make 2013 "a year of tipping points".
Goldstuck notes the NLD is expected to be completed this year, linking all major cities in SA. "As is the Fibreco network that includes Cell C and Internet Solutions in the partnership."
The NLD network, he points out, will contribute to impacting the Internet and telecoms space in SA, to the point of an explosion in data consumption, and in mere usage of the Internet.
Lambotharan says the project is expected to positively impact business development and entrepreneurship in the country - in terms of access speeds, as well as delivering the ability to circumvent challenges around national and last-mile connectivity.
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