The ITWeb Broadband conference, taking place on 8 and 9 October, at the Indaba Hotel in Fourways, will feature discussions on the opportunities and challenges of broadband transformation in the country.
Last month, ITWeb reported the landing of the undersea cable Seacom on South African shores. The 17 000km-cable supplies 1.28Tb of capacity and links south and east Africa to global networks. It's expected that Seacom will change the Internet market in SA, promising competitive international broadband access rates and faster speeds.
The ITWeb Broadband conference will explore the impact of Seacom on broadband service provision as well as key growth drivers in Africa's wireless broadband market. SA's broadband policy and regulatory framework, as well as broadband applications for rural community development, will also be discussed.
The two-day conference is set to feature 12 speakers from organisations such as MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, Seacom, Neotel, Dark Fibre Africa and iBurst. A half-day workshop will be held on the second day.
A new dawn
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says some of the major benefits stemming from the Seacom cable is that it drives competition, encourages supply and makes it easier to negotiate broadband. He says this will result in a drop in telecommunications pricing.
“Once we have national fibre network fully in place, it will mean performance will improve. It will offer services that are lot more cost-effective for the consumers. It's a case of the supply chain becoming more diverse and versatile,” says Goldstuck.
“Access to the cable will be available along the entire route of the networks and a lot of bottlenecks will get removed. Capacity issues will gradually fall away for the consumers. And from a research and development point of view, universities are the biggest broadband beneficiaries, and will receive far greater capacity at lower cost.”
Goldstuck adds: “Everyone is expecting a new dawn in broadband and we are now seeing the light of dawn in the distance.”
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ITWeb Broadband 2009