Neotel says it will be focus on becoming SA's first converged communications provider and is planning to roll out fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).
This is according to Neotel chief technology officer Angus Hay, who spoke at last week's 11th annual ST Group User conference. The conference, hosted in Midrand, revealed trends around telecommunications, the Internet and location intelligence.
Hay pointed out that FTTH in SA will be driven by high-speed Internet, delivered by international undersea cables Seacom and Eassy, as well as the five-terabit cable WACS, which he said is expected to bring in a flood of bandwidth next year.
“Broadband 2.0 is driving FTTH to provide true high-speed Internet services. The massive cost of rolling out fibre to the home is currently the biggest challenge.”
Hay posed that a possible solution to cost-effectively deploying FTTH across SA would be by forming partnerships with other telcos. However, he said, for now, Neotel would be focusing on rolling out fibre networks to its business target market in high-density areas, such as Sandton.
Hay said: “When the minister issued an invitation for telcos to apply for a second national operator licence, this led to the telecoms industry rapidly transforming from an environment dominated by a single monopoly provider of fixed-line to voice and data services to a liberalised market of over 400 competitors.”
Hay explained that in the past, telcos had to apply for separate licences and build separate networks to manage voice, data and Internet. He said that today, all three are converging and can be delivered via a single fibre network.
“In the past, these services were based on separate networks, serviced by different operators who held separate licences,” noted Hay.
“Today, we have built one network to manage them all. Like it or not, the Internet is dominating communications and in the future it will become the standard way of doing business.”
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