Route 21 Corporate Park becomes one of first office parks to install an open access fibre network

Route 21 Corporate Park, the R2 billion office park development near Irene, Pretoria, is to become one of the first office park to install an open access fibre network, providing “unrivalled communications potential for current and future tenants”, said Org Geldenhuys, a trustee of the Route 21 property association.

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), which will be installing the R10 million fibre optic network, said users will be able to craft their own communications needs - including the size of their pipeline.

Geldenhuys said the beauty of the system is that users can now make use of any service provider, tapping into communication services such as voice, data, video and Internet.

DFA, which is footing the R10 million installation bill, makes its money by on-selling communications capacity to service providers, such as Telkom, Neotel and Vox Telecom.

Immediate benefits that companies will get out of the project are:

* A dedicated fibre-optic connection to tenant buildings in Route 21 Corporate Park;
* "Open Access" for any telecommunications supplier to provide services to customers in Route 21 Corporate Park over the fibre connection;
* Access to "true broadband" with almost unlimited bandwidth and Internet access;
* An alternative telecommunications infrastructure that is, for the first time, truly independent of Telkom's infrastructure; and
* Backup power and true redundancy built into the network to ensure that power outages and other catastrophic events have no effect on service delivery.

The installation also opens up an area for hi-tech companies due to the access to broadband. In-built redundancy in terms of the telecommunications infrastructure also makes the business park ideal for disaster recovery sites, call centres and data centres.

“This is certainly a boon for the 300-odd companies who are already resident here. With our new fibre optic network, we are also perfectly positioned to provide call centre companies with the right communication facilities. The call centre industry - and business process outsourcing (BPO) in general - is a big source of revenue for SA. All that a company active in the BPO industry needs to do - thanks to our new fibre optics network - is to 'pitch up' and plug their telephone system into the network.”

In order to provide seamless connectivity, all calls at Route 21 will be channelled through more than one exchange, or service provider.

This means the chances of any downtime are “very minimal”.

“Users can also choose what data speeds - and capacity - they will require. We are now talking terabytes of data capacity,” said Geldenhuys.

With the first phase of Route 21 Corporate Park now complete, construction work has begun on phase two - which will also be worth more than R1 billion once completed.