Africa INX, a licensed provider of wholesale operator services in the South African market, and group company of EOH, has announced the launch of its Wireless to Fibre backhaul solution, “Wibre”. The service, which makes use of the substantial Africa INX investment into a Metro E Fibre network, will extend this network using, among other things, wireless technology.
“Africa INX has rolled out a substantial Metro E Fibre ring over the last two years, spanning over 200km in distance, and connecting key areas such as the city, Sandton, Rivonia, Bryanston, Centurion, Isando, Midrand, Edenvale and several other areas. However, due to the sometimes slow speed of extending the fibre network to clients in these areas, we have opted to use wireless networking as an interim or even permanent last mile solution,” says Stuart Hardy, Managing Director of Africa INX.
Even though the proliferation of wireless in the South African market tends to work against the technology as a trusted last mile, Hardy believes that if you can limit the use of wireless to within a few kilometres, and drop the service back into a fibre network for long haul backhaul, quality and throughput can be maintained.
“Wireless has in many cases built up a bad reputation in the South African market. Most of this is due to the over use of unlicensed/unregulated bands, resulting in poor speeds and poor overall performance. However, if you are not using wireless as part of your core network, and can restrict the delivery of wireless to the real “last mile”, then most of these issues can be overcome. Because we have fibre nodes in many Metro locations, our intention is to only provide wireless as a quick and fast route to our fibre network. The result of this strategy is that wireless does not travel through congested high sites and can maintain good quality signal and throughput,” ends Hardy.
Africa INX is in the process of rolling out wireless capability at their fibre locations in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In line with the service availability will be a new line of services, including per Gig Internet and Internet Extreme (ADSL type service on fibre or wireless).
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